Had Citizen Kane been about an uninteresting Cape Verde businessman whose secrets, when brought to light through extensive investigation, turn out to be neither thematically significant nor emotionally resonant, it might have looked something like the episodic Portuguese comedy-drama Testamento. The story opens in 1984, when the richest man on the island, an eccentric and ironic figure played in flashback by Nelson Xavier, dies in his sleep, prompting a day of mourning in the small coastal town of Mindelo. The heir apparent is greedy and duplicitous nephew Chico Díaz, who sits through the reading of his uncle's will like a vulture, ready to snap up his vast fortune and his import-export business. But Díaz is shocked to learn that Xavier has bequeathed his entire estate to illegitimate daughter Maria Ceiça, who knew her father only as the strange "pervert" who used to follow her around and offer her money. Armed with a stack of audio tapes containing his life story, Ceiça sorts through his love affairs, business ventures, and family history, suddenly privy to a side of her father that no one else was allowed to see. Composed primarily of flashbacks, Testamento colors Xavier's story with bizarre twists of fate, well-timed miracles, and key romantic miscues, but the result is curiously diffuse and undernourished, with few revelations that could actually count as revelatory. His ascent to power—accidentally importing 10,000 umbrellas for a city that rarely sees a drop of rain, getting rich off an unexpected storm, and then winning the people's favor by scamming limestone to mend the damages—is packed with the sort of offbeat ironies the film generally lacks. In its place is a succession of banal affairs and dealings made palatable by gorgeous travelogue shots of Cape Verde and a lilting samba score by local musicians Tito Paris and Cesaria Evora. After a while, the backdrops are seductive enough to tempt a vacation from the movie itself.