EHM M
Some parts good, but the whole wedding thing plain annoying, Even the secrets were just one secret - everyone is having everyone else.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
09/16/23
Full Review
armen p
FAMILY SECRETS
Or How To Not Get Married
By armen pandola
Comedy is hard to translate. Take the title - Family Secrets or Gry Rodzinne in its original Polish which translates literally to ‘Family Games' - a much better title for this 8 episode Netflix series about two Polish families that collide into each other. In fact, the series could be called ‘Family Collisions.'
It all starts with an actual collision between Kaska (Eliza Rycembel) and Pawel (Piotr Pacek), two medical students, when Pawel rescues Kaska who is about to get hit by a bus because she is reading her phone instead of looking where she is going. They start a relationship that is at the core of the series - or should I say at the inner membrane since like an onion, this show is a series of layers, slowly unraveling to get at its inner truth. Or truths.
If you are a fan of flashbacks, this series is for you. The story is cut up into so many pieces that, by the end, you can't help but beg for the final piece of the puzzle to be put into place. And here is a spoiler - sort of - don't get your hopes up too high.
The major framework is the wedding ceremony of two seemingly ill-matched people, members of the two families that are the Montagues and Capulets of this RomCom series.
The Blizkas are a family of two daughters, Kaska and her make-up artist sister, Alicja (Malgorzata Mikolajczak), mother, Malgorzata (Izabela Kuna), and mostly absent father, Marek (Marek Kalita). They appear to be a middle-class family of some means since money is never an issue for all the foolishness they get into. The husband wants to move to a rural town for a better job while the wife doesn't want to leave Warsaw. Alicja has a romance that ends in tragedy. All of this is revealed in pieces, small pieces over a few episodes, as all of the other facts of this series' jumbled plot.
The Jaworowiczs are a wealthy family of three: mother Dorota (Edyta Olszówka) teaches at the medical school, father Emil (Pawel Delag) is a plastic surgeon as is his partner/son, Jan (Bartosz Geiner). Each of them has her/his reason for not liking the other two. Dorota hates her husband's constant philandering - with colleagues and patients alike. Jan hates him for that reason and more - his father is a much better surgeon. Meanwhile, Emil resents that he had to become a plastic surgeon and waste his talents on fixing noses and tits, all so his wife could have the money and prestige she craves.
The show is a kind of Polish Lives of the Rich if not Famous. There is a lot of glitz and glitter. It looks beautiful - so kudos to the cinematographer, set designer, costume and production designers. The acting is top-notch. In fact, all of the elements are there for a hit show excepting one - the script is so over the top with misdirection and flashbacks within flashbacks that it is hard to follow. Yes, many parts are laugh-out-loud funny, but many are, also, deceptively puzzling - annoying, really. Having to read all the dialogue doesn't help.
The major theme of the series is that nothing is certain, nothing can be counted upon, nothing is as it seems. So, people seem to drop dead for no apparent reason - and many of them rise again, having only fainted. People jump into each others' arms and then, just as quickly, run from each other. Passion rules and as Shakespeare says:
Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs —
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers' tears.
Reluctantly, I recommend it - hey, a laugh is nothing to sneeze at. And if you do watch it, watch over a couple of days - not much more or you will never remember all the twists and turns of this series' dizzy, ditsy plot.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
03/30/23
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