The Inheritance

Daniel Filho's 2001 Brazilian film adapts a stage play by Miguel Falabella and makes no attempt to hide its theatrical origin. After their mother's funeral, four sisters, Selma, Regina, Laura and Lúcia, gather to divide an apartment in Copacabana. What actually gets divided is not the apartment: it is years of unspoken jealousy, ledgers of who sacrificed more, old records of who was the favourite. The script runs almost entirely on dialogue, and a cast that includes Glória Pires and Lília Cabral is strong enough to carry it. The interesting thing is how the film holds comedy and hurt in the same scene. Even at their cruellest the sisters stay funny, because they are all fighting in the language of the same household. That the director came out of Brazilian television is visible in the plainness of the camerawork. Who it's for: viewers who enjoy single-location family reckonings driven by performance, and anyone curious about mainstream Brazilian cinema. Who it's not for: those looking for cinematic movement, who find the enclosed feel of stage adaptations airless.