Writer and Director: Ben Petrie
The Heirloom is a little gem of a movie. Ben Petrie, who writes and directs, stars as Eric alongside Grace Glowicki as Allie. They are a couple of earnest, early thirty-something suburbanites, given to solemnly explaining their feelings to one another. Eric is an as-yet unsuccessful film maker and the couple consciously perform their lives to one another as Eric photographs and films (comic) intimate moments. An early sequence shows Grace doing pole-dancing moves against a door jamb as Eric provides an improvised sound track. It’s a masterpiece of Woody Allenesque deadpan humour, Eric, with his intense bespectacled gaze, a sort of Woody Allen de nous jours. He is also a writer. He’s been working or rather tinkering with a novel for five years. We catch him solemnly writing ‘italicise’ against various phrases and sense he’ll never have the courage to submit it.
Allie, meanwhile, works on Eric to agree to getting dog. She’s fallen for a Chinese Crested and researched a breeder (“an ethical breeder,” she stresses) who only wants $1000 deposit. But it has to be a rescue dog, Eric reminds her, because of his vegan principles. Somehow a rescue dog is sourced and there’s a wonderfully moody pickup in a car park by night. By this point, Eric has swapped his relaxation tape for a scary one which trains you to be a successful dog owner. A deep male voice tell him he must assume the role of Ideal Pack Leader: “Think like a leader, stink like a leader.” The diminutive Eric gravely tries out his “calm but dominant” voice, as the couple conscientiously prepare to meet Milly, their new whippet. At first Milly is understandably shy. “Shall I try Spanish?” Allie asks – Milly is from the Dominican Republic.
The early anxieties of dog-ownership are brilliantly satirised. The scene in which Eric celebrates Milly’s first poo is hilarious. She settles in nicely, but Eric continues to work through his worries about his work-life balance. Then, in a nicely meta moment, he realises it’s his destiny to make a movie about Milly. It will be, he decides, an heirloom. So he captures everything from the traumatic episode when Milly is carried to an emergency vet – has the switch to vegan dog food upset her? – to their own tensions as a couple. Dog ownership, Eric pompously declares, has laid bare their shortcomings as people. The dominant pack leader voice in his head begins to say “failure.£ “Are you going to turn everything into a movie?” Allie asks.
There’s a great music score by Casey MQ, the slow pace and ominous woodwinds mirroring the couple’s tension. And Director of Photography Kelly Jeffrey cleverly captures the deliberately home-made feel of the whole movie.
The Heirloom itself never misses a comic beat. It’s hilarious.
The Heirloom is screening at the Raindance Film Festival runs from 19 – 28 June in London cinemas.
