Family Secrets

Summary

Family Secrets is a sophisticated ensemble story that exceeds dramatic comedy, combining it with other genres and exhibiting a very ingenious narrative structure, with twists and turns in time combined with changes in point of view that permanently redefine certain situations and the motivations of its characters.

Review

A wedding is constantly interrupted by the hesitations of the future spouses and the interference of their relatives.

For some time now, the series show a certain concern to get out of the chronologically linear stories. Family Secrets is a choral story with skilfully alternate roles that successfully combines their comings and goings in time with a change in point of view, with a return to the same situations but from the perspective of a different character. This adds information about what is happening and the motivations of the characters and modifies its meaning (for the viewer and for the characters), also playing with ambiguity and misunderstanding.

In essence, the series unravels the intricate relationship between the bride and groom and their respective families (the Wilskas and the Jaworowicz). To do this, he also resorts to another constant in modern series: the combination of genres. Family Secrets exceeds the dramatic comedy, since in addition to displaying that dry Polish humor it can (and knows how to) get very serious and quite dark, venturing into noir, going through the comedy of intrigues and the romantic comedy.

As usually happens with these series, and for all these reasons, it takes a while to get into its dynamic (something that also happens with The White Lotus, for example); but sooner or later empathy begins with its great gallery of characters with their respective registers (each one will have their favorites; in my case, Dorota, by Edyta Olszówka), without prejudice to our perception of them changing with time. The running of the chapters in some cases. This goes hand in hand with a great cast, including Eliza Rycembel (Corpus Christi) as the bride and Bartosz Gelner as the groom.

The series sharply focuses on marriage, fidelity, generational conflicts and, tangentially, class conflicts and is quite harsh with the medical and academic world.