'THE HEIRLOOM' REVIEW: Canada's Most Underappreciated On-Screen Partnership Is Back [4/5]
Notable Acting Performances and Tonal Creativity Elevate This Pandemic Picture
[Rating 4/5] - dir. Ben Petrie - 2024 - Canada - PG 13 - 1h 27m - Drama
Canadian writer-director Ben Petrie makes films where the story is not the point, the filmmaking is the point. The opportunity for performance is the point. Inspiring the audience to take note is the point.
And although both his films could be described as small (length-wise for his first project, 2017’s short film Her Friend Adam, and plot-wise for this film, The Heirloom, due to the limitations COVID created), they are also refreshingly weird (unaccompanied theramin, anyone?) and playfully audacious (Meryl Streep wishes she was given this big an acting sandbox).
Petrie but especially co-star Grace Glowicki tear through emotional scenery like King Kong attacks New York City skyscrapers. They leave monster-sized impressions; outsized and funny and scary and alive.
Spend 16 minutes with their characters in Her Friend Adam, and you will not forget them. There, they allow jealousy and insecurity over a friendship to eviscerate their romantic relationship.
In The Heirloom, they play an older version of (plausibly) the same couple who decide to get a dog. Crises of self-confidence, masculinity, messy boundaries, and family tension arise! The two poles!
Petrie and Glowicki have the dynamism as actors and the self-awareness as writers to know how to create a simple yet giving premise like this, upsize it to feature length, and not fall victim to the same issues (poor pacing, unfocused storytelling, artificial dialogue) that plague so many of their less accomplished but equally ambitious peers’ genre projects.
Petrie had me doubled over laughing multiple times with his creative delivery and physical comedy. Glowicki has an unmistakable, unwavering aura that makes everything she does compelling.
They do well with small. I suspect they’d do even better with bigger.
Quiero mas, pero mas grande.
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The Heirloom is available starting November 29, 2024.
Selected Movie Quote: A four-way tie between…
“Familia.”
“We’ve gotta smoke the first impression.”
“Completely fucking obsessed ‘cause it’s the only way you’re gonna be any good at it whatsoever.”
[Rating 4/5] - dir. Ben Petrie - 2024 - Canada - PG 13 - 1h 27m - Drama