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Like the earlier 13 Tzameti [DVD] [2006], Temur and Gela Babluani's Legacy aka L'Héritage is not much more than another modern-day traveller's tale, yet despite having a less sensational and commercially exploitable premise, it's rather more satisfying despite it's slightness. Even at some 75 minutes, it's a leisurely paced film, initially following a trio of French backpackers en route to a castle one of them has inherited in Georgia with their translator and doing all the things tourists usually do: filming everything, getting their camera stolen, haggling with locals and ending up on a long cross-country bus trip. It's here that the plot starts to twist as an old man and his grandson get on with an empty coffin. The coffin is for the old man, who is travelling to an `enemy' village where he'll be killed to finally put an end to a 40 year vendetta, sparking the curiosity of the foreigners with predictably catastrophic results. It probably would take too much to guess how things are going to turn out, but taking its pacing from the journey itself, events gradually unfold and reveal themselves with surprising naturalism: it's more an observation piece than the melodrama the plot implies or the surreal comedy the opening and closing music threatens. It doesn't add up to a great deal, but it manages to cast a spell of its own, playing its absurdity straight and benefiting from finely underplayed performances, especially Pascal Bongard as the wary but compliant translator and Augustin Legrand as a mute trader.
Revolver's UK DVD is completely extras-free, but does boast a decent 2.35:1 transfer.
