"Geerbtes Glück", which means "inherited happiness", is a German television film from 2004, so this one had its 15th anniversary not too long ago. I will spare you the names of the writers (one is not related to Anke is she?) and director here, but let me say that other stuff they worked on during their careers includes "Das Traumschiff", "Rote Rosen", "Rosamunde Pilcher" and "In aller Freundschaft", in other words the pond scum of German television. I would normally say I am surprised because we have two writers here and how they did not help each other out and see that the screenplay is really not good gently-speaking, but looking at everything else they worked on I am not surprised these 90 minutes are basically a mess from beginning to end. The cast includes some names and faces that you will maybe recognize if you are into German movies in general and my guess is you are if you ended up on this film's profile page. Francis Fulton-Smith has (despite the name) been in so many German small screen projects and same is true about Michael Mendl, only that his body of work includes a lot more quality I would say overall. Not sure why he would show up in a film like this that was basically doomed from the start. And there are other prolific actors in here of course: One of these would be Ursula Monn, but honestly she is so so bad and I have rarely seen it be the case that one actor really messes up each and every line they are given with horrible line delivery, but Monn "succeeds". Admittedly, her lines are all pretty bad, but still, some of the other actors do not mess up like that. As for lead actress Jennifer Nitsch, she has more weak moments than good moments too unfortunately. People say it is not good to speak in a disrespectful way about the dead, but oh well, at least she won't read it anymore. Sadly, she died really briefly after this film at a very young age clearly under 40 and it was a suicide probably. So back to her performance. There were just two moments I found especially weak. One would be simply when she says something like "It is me" when she calls her (soon-to-be) boyfriend and it takes a special lack of skill to mess this up. And the second would be a scene earlier I think, in which she is having a coffee or so with FFS' character and he asks something about her ex-girlfriend and she reacts in a really itchy manner that already did not make a lot of sense, but there the writers are to blame. Nitsch, however, is to blame when we see her reaction and face expression how she switches from pretty mad to smiley and that transformation was pretty painful to watch. Bad acting there.
Now as for the film itself, the screenplay was just a joke and not a good one. There are many scenes and key plot references that are very poorly written. And also instead of giving us nice attention to detail aside the central story and characters, they also messed up everything else. The best example is that of course while the female protagonist falls for an Italian guy, her daughter also ends up with a boy from the country really close to FFS' character. I don't want to say anything about the car accident near the end either, not because I don't want to spoiler you, but because it was so horrible bad and unrealistic pseudo drama. As for pseudo drama, there is also the revelation with the vineyard and the premises that the man's family wants to buy near the end, which was easy to predict really, but it adds nothing and e always know they are going to get their unrealistic happy ending. What else sucked? Oh yeah, the female protagonist's good friend, who wants more, so we don't forget how desirable Nitsch's character is. And how he was written. Rating this film in terms of characters' shades is a straight 0/10. Same for realism. How can you really believe it feels realistic to us that she meets FFS' character in this not too serious car accident early on with the connection he has to her "thanks" to his father. That actor was still a little bit better I would say and he kinda pulled off playing an Italian character while coming from somewhere else entirely, namely the Czech republic I think. As for the female protagonist's father, that one is played by Mendl and really he has almost nothing to work with. All he did in this film as try to get a coffee with his daughter I thought. But maybe it was better this way that they did not give us another pseudo-important family story here, looking at how they messed up the writing for everything else. Well, what else can I say here. The title already sounds like a Lilly Schönauer film and this is exactly the quality you can expect here. It is failure from beginning to end and also really baffling how this film was not even beautiful to watch despite being set in mostly rural Italy. Highly not recommended.
Now as for the film itself, the screenplay was just a joke and not a good one. There are many scenes and key plot references that are very poorly written. And also instead of giving us nice attention to detail aside the central story and characters, they also messed up everything else. The best example is that of course while the female protagonist falls for an Italian guy, her daughter also ends up with a boy from the country really close to FFS' character. I don't want to say anything about the car accident near the end either, not because I don't want to spoiler you, but because it was so horrible bad and unrealistic pseudo drama. As for pseudo drama, there is also the revelation with the vineyard and the premises that the man's family wants to buy near the end, which was easy to predict really, but it adds nothing and e always know they are going to get their unrealistic happy ending. What else sucked? Oh yeah, the female protagonist's good friend, who wants more, so we don't forget how desirable Nitsch's character is. And how he was written. Rating this film in terms of characters' shades is a straight 0/10. Same for realism. How can you really believe it feels realistic to us that she meets FFS' character in this not too serious car accident early on with the connection he has to her "thanks" to his father. That actor was still a little bit better I would say and he kinda pulled off playing an Italian character while coming from somewhere else entirely, namely the Czech republic I think. As for the female protagonist's father, that one is played by Mendl and really he has almost nothing to work with. All he did in this film as try to get a coffee with his daughter I thought. But maybe it was better this way that they did not give us another pseudo-important family story here, looking at how they messed up the writing for everything else. Well, what else can I say here. The title already sounds like a Lilly Schönauer film and this is exactly the quality you can expect here. It is failure from beginning to end and also really baffling how this film was not even beautiful to watch despite being set in mostly rural Italy. Highly not recommended.
