Film Reviews

The Inheritance

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: Ghita Norby
• Details: Swe & Den/ 115 mins/ (no cert).

After his old man commits suicide, the thirty-something Stockholm restaurateur Christoffer (Ulrich Thomsen) is put under pressure - both real and imagined - to return home to look after the vast industrial Copenhagen–based empire that his family has assembled. Married to free-spirited actress Maria (Lisa Werlinder), he reluctantly assumes control of the business, only to discover that the company is in dire financial straits, his brother-in-law Ulrik (Lars Brygmann) isn't willing to surrender the control that he has assumed, and his mother Annelise (Ghita Norby) isn't exactly a shy and retiring sort, content to let her son make his own decisions. Having already run away from his family once, Christoffer has to decide where his priorities lie...
A handsome, well-constructed parable about the perilous nature of mixing business and family, The Inheritance is an intelligent, human drama, with obvious Shakespearean undertones. In the hands of one less skilled, Fly's film could descend into a trite soap opera, but his decision to focus on the multi-layered human drama unfolding just beneath the surface means that The Inheritance isn't content to offer easy-to-digest characters or predicaments. The smooth stylistics of the film seem to be reflective of the film's overall morale that anything in life is rarely black and white - just shades of grey.

Review by Garreth Murphy