‘When the pressure builds, you don’t notice it. But once that valve blows, it’s chaos. And during the holidays, people’s valves tend to blow.” It’s fortunate that plumber Lucek (Janusz Chabior), repairing a burst pipe so warring couple Szczepan (Piotr Adamczyk) and Karina (Agnieszka Dygant) can salvage their Christmas dinner, specialises in simultaneous waterworks and relationship advice. That yule season is the same fraught affair everywhere is the message served up in glossy globalised style by this hit Polish franchise, now on its sixth instalment after kicking off in 2011 inspired by Love, Actually.
Lucek, though, is hardly a good guy; he’s actually angling to fleece Józek (Hiroaki Murakami), a wide-eyed Japanese visitor to Warsaw out to reconnect with his Polish ancestry. That’s one pick from this bumper pick ’n’ mix of tales: there’s also a band of boozed-up grifters flocking around shady Santa Mel (Tomasz Karolak), pulling together to put one of their team back on the straight and narrow. Meanwhile, home-alone Ignaś (Aron Komodziński-Bak) is so set on getting the miniature coal wagon he wanted to share with his late father that he jumps into the back of the delivery van when the gift doesn’t arrive. And terminal singleton Ewa (Magdalena Walach) sits down on a plane next to literature professor Wojciech (Wojciech Malajkat) – but maybe his repeated insistence that “life is beautiful” should ring alarm bells.
What unites these vignettes is a crotchety Christmas Eve cynicism, all the better to let the festive cheer flood in later. But leaning on familiarity with the characters from previous films, too many don’t bother establishing an irresistible situation; instead, they coast on an antic sugar high to strangely forced effect. Fortunately, director Łukasz Jaworski, who also helmed the previous instalments, knows how to maximise this energy; he gets spirited performances across the board – especially from Adamczyk and Dygant in their volcanic spats.
There’s the odd glint of pleasing absurdity on this over decorated tree – like when the gun Wojciech snatches from a housebreaker seems to send him over the edge after a thwarted restaurant order. But of course his incoming tryst with Ewa, and peace on Earth, is the bigger requirement here. The film’s plumbing is all too obvious on that front.
• Listy do M 6 (Letters to Santa 6) is in UK cinemas from 22 November.
