The Wages of Sin!

A woman asleep inside a freshly-dug grave, a group of kids who offer a strange union of sinisterness and endearment, a young priest passed out drunk - these disparate images greet you when you begin an interaction with the film. The disparateness ensures that the viewer is already lured deep into the world of The Wages of Sin!, one they are now unlikely to leave until the narrative has reached its conclusion.

The plot offers an important motif in the form of a coin, just casually introduced within the story, but a crucial object that would come to alter the course of the film every time a crossroads or the need to make an important decision arrives. The woman, Martha, is soon revealed to be digging the grave of her husband who seems to have returned from the dead with an important task that he has assigned to her. The bamboozled priest, trying to make sense of the situation, on the other hand, attempts to reason with her.

The introductory images are now all weaved together to allow the story to come into its own. The monochrome palette of a dark comedy of this kind, sometimes presents it with inhibitions, but to a willing viewer, also adds an otherworldliness to the events unfolding before you. On the whole, once you look past the rough edges, the film packs an entertaining punch marked by humor, eccentricity and the eventual (and satisfying!) vindication of the fates of the characters.