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Payment in Kind (1980)

Payment in Kind (1980)

Comedy
Release Date: 1980, February 26
Directors: Jaromil Jireš
Countries: Czechoslovakia
Production: Filmové studio Barrandov
Cast: Jiří Lír, Marie Málková, Jaroslav Satoranský, Karel Bělohradský, Zlata Adamovská, Pavel Zedníček, Martin Růžek, Alena Vránová, Ladislav Goral, Jana Andresíková, Marcel Vašinka, Karel Augusta

Overview:

In an unusual, apolitical approach, director Jaromil Jires has fashioned a standard drama that features an older lawyer with failing health who goes to practice in the countryside. His series of odd court cases reveals more about the human condition than about law. In one of these litigations a wayward nephew has cheated his elderly aunt out of her savings. In court, the nephew insists the money was a gift, but his aunt explains she only gave him the money as a loan. Although the lawyer technically wins the case, everything of value seems lost in the meantime. His services are paid for in rabbits because the aunt has no currency, and in the end, the nephew cons his aunt into parting with her savings anyway. Other cases expose similar types of petty corruption.