INHERITANCE/SPADEK
Wind, 2024, 93 minutes, Colour.
Jan Peszek, Maciel Stuhr, Joanna Trzepiezcibnska, Gabriella Muskawa, Piotr Pacek.
Directed by Sylwester Jakimow.
This is a popular comedy designed for Polish audiences. However, basic plot is universal (seen in such films as the British Laughter in Paradise, or the various versions of The Cat and the Canary), relatives gathering for the reading of a will.
As expected, there is a motley set of characters, are very fixated teacher, his haughty and somewhat ambitious wife, teenage daughter, younger son. There is a writer of crime fiction with a younger man, and a gay couple. Nieces and nephews of the eccentric inventor, game show host, with whom they have had little contact, but who has summoned them, by the eccentric butler. As a sitting, the but the reeds the will – all the money left to a local orphanage.
But, the uncle is alive, inviting them to get to know each other, and some games that he wants them to play. Although disappointed in not getting the money, there is the prospect of getting the patents to his many inventions if they succeed in the game.
So, a whole lot of popular ingredients which may appeal to the popular audience (it seems not to critics!). There is the range of characters and their eccentricities. There is a storm but to policeman turn up and interrogate each of the adults, the audience seeing what they answered in their interrogations and what they say they said. And these turn out to be bogus police, to criminals eager to find the patents.
There is a voice-over by the father of the two children, rather ingenuous in its way. And, of course, each of the characters has a secret, the state couple pondering a divorce, the gay couple the possibilities of adopting, the novelist concealing her age and wondering whether the younger man is really in love with her.
And course there are secret passages and tunnels in the house, and escape room and the various shenanigans to get out, the quiz a quiz for them to be eligible for the patents.
And the further complication that the old uncle has been stabbed to death, his having invented a stronger than Kessler first and shown how he could stabbed himself without dying – but stabbed while not wearing it!
In various solutions, the old uncle and ominously ringing each of the candidates to get information from them so that he could build up his quiz and test them, and the revelation about one of his programs, a woman giving a wrong answer then committing suicide, her son going to an orphanage and wanting to wreak revenge. Spoiler, the young lover of the novelist was the son of the quiz contestant!
Actually, the plot could be remade by any other film industry.
