6/10
Remake of "Les Destinées sentimentales" by Olivier Assayas
8 February 2005
I'm surprised no one noticed that "The Inheritance" is a remake of remake of "Les Destinées sentimentales" (2000) by Olivier Assayas, updated to the present and set in Denmark. It simplifies the story and the moral quite a bit. It's a good film, but if you enjoyed it you should see the French original. Unlike Fly, Assayas doesn't present the viewer with a choice between life and work so much as meditation on the possibilities of art in the modern world.

The difference in the films is symbolized by the family businesses: steel in Denmark versus porcelain in France, the one solid, simple, and cold, the other elegant, fragile, and complex.

It cannot be purely by accident that French is a second language in the film...

Ulrich Thomsen is as good an actor as Charles Berling, however, and looks a lot like Lawrence Olivier. Perhaps that's why there are allusions to Hamlet.
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