A wedding can be a tightly wound knot of nerves, expectations, pride, and venom. Even the reception, often meant to offer the exhale of revelry and drink toasting, can be marred by petty jealousies, deep-seated rivalries, or overly obscure disputes. The wedding reception in The In-Laws (Teściowie), the feature film from Polish director Jakub Michalczuk, takes on its particular air of discontentment from the fact that, well, the preceding wedding didn’t even happen—the bride and groom got cold feet. And while most of the reception’s attendees seem happy to carry on with their imbibing and their dancing, the on-the-rocks couple’s parents decide to turn the celebration into a forum for finger pointing, snide comments, and veiled threats, leaving no stone left unturned as they exhaust every explanation for the wedding’s dissolution.  

Equal parts satirical and savage in its social critiques, Michalczuk’s film operates as if it had chilled vodka coursing through its veins—and that’s not just because of the copious amounts consumed during the film’s runtime. The In-Laws skewers family and class dynamics with the impunity of a bitter drunk, chomping at the coattails of the affluent Andrezj (Marcin Dorocinski) and Malgorzata (Maja Ostaszewska), dislodging the warn soles of the working class Tadeusz (Adam Woronowicz) and Wanda (Izabela Kuna). It is a dialogue-heavy affair, but appropriately so, and it is impeccably orchestrated in its long takes and fluid staging, which assure a real-time feeling of progression and an always-evolving dynamism.

One might be reminded of Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration or Gaspar Noé’s Climax the way the story devolves over the course of a single day/event, and in the way its characters adjourn or stray from said event, but are inevitably pulled back into the chaos. While The In-Laws never quite drags us to the same harrowing depths of depravity and delirium as these two films, it still offers a gleefully unhinged experience, and a consistently humorous one at that. The dialogue is deliciously scathing, spewed forth like bitter stomach bile. And still, there is pathos in the characters’ rage; a fragility, particularly on the part of Ostaszewska’s Malgorzata. Her acid is unleashed in the calculated torrents of a woman whose scorn targets not just the topics of the evening, but maybe every battle that preceded it as well. She trembles in her glassy-eyed delivery with a withered resoluteness that seems to encapsulate a lifetime’s worth of marital unrest.

The party in the background of The In-Laws, much a supporting character itself, will sometimes burst into frame or hijack centre stage in order to punctuate the film’s marching-cum-stumbling pace. While the background characters don’t ever amount to more than caricatures, one shouldn’t find this surprising in a film titled, well, The In-Laws. Michalczuk keeps his drama chamber-sized to exert assured control over his story’s bottle elements and maximize the whip-smart interplay between the sparring mains.

As an aside, I would also like to mention that this film was my first in-person screening at a film festival in over 18 months. This may mean I was predisposed towards bias, but it also meant I was as receptive to audience reaction as ever. Gaging such a reaction, it was evident during The In-Laws that the festival experience is alive and well. The In-Laws is a wholly surprising and galvanizing time at the movies, equal parts shock and delight, that is sure to unite crowds in unanimous laughter and applause. It may sound lofty to call one film the “ideal” festival viewing experience, but with our festivals slowly returning to normal operations, I can’t think of a better way to urge you out to theatres again. VIFF, it’s good to be back.