The Inheritance

The Inheritance explores the bad side of business

By Jeannette Catsoulis

A chilly little Danish melodrama about the erosion of personal values by the soulless tide of business, The Inheritance wants to explore the consequences of poor choices. Which would be fine, if we were ever able to believe its protagonist had any real choice in the first place.

After fleeing the stress of his family's steel mining business--which robbed him of 30 pounds and damn near killed him--Christoffer (The Celebration's Ulrich Thomsen) is living in Sweden with his actress wife, Maria (Lisa Werlinder), happily managing a restaurant. But when his father hangs himself in despair over massive corporate losses, Christoffer is summoned back to Denmark by his poisonous mother, Annelise (Ghita Nżrby) and reminded of his responsibilities. It's now up to him to save the business, and, by extension, the family fortune.

Initially reluctant, Christoffer soon finds his corporate feet and begins to exercise power, firing hundreds of workers and even his brother-in-law (Lars Brygmann). Maria, dismayed by her husband's creeping coldness, calls it quits. "You're cold as ice," she hisses on her way out; in response, he sexually assaults the maid. These "Dynasty"-esque moments only distract from the film's strengths: a smooth and subtle transformation by Thomsen, and a wonderfully bleak atmosphere of slow suffocation.

Moving from the warm tones of the early Stockholm scenes to unnerving shades of iron gray, The Inheritance gradually develops the sterile coldness of a surgical suite and the same air of hovering death. Director Per Fly intended the film as the second in a trilogy about class in Scandinavia (his first feature, The Bench, is a working-class drama), and The Inheritance is an overtly negative look at old money and its attendant demands. When duty calls, says the movie, both the heart and the soul are its slaves.