The Inheritance

In Budapest in 1936, the wealthy Szilvia cannot have the child she needs to pass on her father’s fortune. She offers money to Irène, a young Jewish seamstress, and asks her to bear a child by her husband. The arrangement holds, but the relationship the money creates between the two women turns into something that moves between jealousy, closeness and dependence, while outside the rise of Nazism and the persecution of Jews settle over everything. In Márta Mészáros’s hundred and five minute Hungarian film, Isabelle Huppert plays Irène and Lili Monori plays Szilvia, with Jan Nowicki also in the cast. It screened in the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 1980.