In 1977 France, the Ministry of the Future chooses two “normal,” white, middle-class citizens, Claudine and Jean-Michel, for a national experiment. They will be monitored and displayed on television for six months in a model apartment outfitted with state-of-the-art products and nonstop surveillance—the template for “a new city for the new man".
An intriguing Hans Christian Anderson-style fairy tale aesthetic and voice over narration. Sudden Wealth is a despairing chronicle of a group of starving peasants who finally seize governmental wealth like a dysfunctional group of Robin Hood's Merry Men, only to be betrayed by their inescapable selves and systematically dehumanized (think bucolic Orwell) and reprogrammed by what we'll put under the rubric of God and Country.
The title refers to the Feuerzangenbowle punch consumed by a group of gentlemen in the opening scene. While they exchange nostalgic stories about their schooldays, the successful young writer Dr. Johannes Pfeiffer realizes he missed out on something because he was taught at home and never attended school. He decides to make up for it by masquerading as a student at a small-town high school. At the school, he quickly gains a reputation as a prankster. Together with his classmates, he torments his professors Crey, Bömmel, and Headmaster Knauer with adolescent mischief. His girlfriend Marion unsuccessfully tries to persuade him to give up his foolish charade. Eventually, he falls in love with the headmaster's daughter and discloses his identity after provoking the teachers into expelling him from school.
