THE FORFEIT ｜ Omeleto

A woman meets her boyfriend's family. Ffion is a working-class Welsh woman who is meeting her wealthy English boyfriend's eccentric family for the first time during the holidays. Seb's family is intimidating, cultured, intellectual and quite posh, and Ffion feels very much like an outsider. And nowhere is that more apparent than when she plays the traditional family game for the first time. Many of the clues elude Ffion at first, much to the disdain of Seb's family members. But the resourceful young woman is a quick study, and soon she picks up on some of them -- including a few that allude to a dark family secret. Directed and written by Josie Charles and Phoebe Brooks, this bracingly dark comedy-mystery focuses on one woman's initiation into her boyfriend's family milieu. It's a fraught situation for Ffion, who is nervous about meeting Seb's intimidating clan. But it is also complicated by the wealth and class differences between Ffion and Seb -- and his family's very serious competitive streak during their holiday game. Briskly setting up the rules of the family game -- which is a more high-minded variation on balderdash -- Ffion enters Seb's family home, confronted with a host of characters from snobby siblings to erudite uncles. With its mordant preoccupations, rarefied settings and arch tone, the film is in the vein of Alfred Hitchcock and Agatha Christie: a mystery whose intrigue hinges on the contrast between a very civilized, very British surface and the nasty, brutish impulses of humankind underneath it.