Over the past few years, much has been written about the undeniable wave of “Covid films,” narratives molded by lockdowns, themes shaped by isolation, and all of it informed by the universal frustrations of the pandemic. Whether it be blockbusters like Glass Onion that plainly foreground the illness, or intimate indie takes on coupledom during lockdown like New Strains, many filmmakers have tried to capture the extraordinary moment that we all lived through, much to the detriment of most of the films ultimately produced by either practical circumstance or intellectual preoccupation. What new is there to say about something we all experienced and know intimately and have seen endlessly represented in art ever since? What was once a topic of intrigue or emotional heft (think Soderbergh’s prescient Contagion), the Covid setting itself no longer guarantees a rapt, or even curious, audience — in fact, it’s becoming much the opposite. In such a crowded field, increasingly, a film needs to possess a considerable stylistic spark or narrative novelty to stand apart. With The Heirloom, Ben Petrie attempts to cut through this homogeneity, and does so by addressing the pandemic mostly as a backdrop, marking a specific timeline and the limitations it imposes on a couple trying to keep life (and creative ambitions) afloat.
Petrie plays Eric, a perfectionist filmmaker struggling to finish a screenplay he’s been revising for years. Stuck at home in Toronto with his partner Allie (Grace Glowicki, Petrie’s real-life partner and collaborator), Eric spends his days obsessing over the minutiae of page-formatting while Allie suggests they finally adopt a dog. Enter Millie, a timid Whippet from the Dominican Republic who becomes both a source of emotional support and a pressure valve for the simmering tensions infecting the household. As Eric’s creative roadblocks and obsession with being the perfect dog parents clash with Allie’s genuine but more laidback desire to nurture their new pet, the couple’s makeshift pandemic bubble fills with quiet frustrations, mounting insecurities, and enough awkwardly funny moments to keep them (and the viewer) slightly off-balance.
What begins as a story about a couple’s quest for canine companionship soon evolves into a film-within-a-film, blurring all early established lines. Eric, unable to focus on his stalled project, shifts gears and trains his lens on their life with Millie, forcing Allie to take on the role of unwilling muse. It’s in this way that The Heirloom slides in and out of heightened reality without losing sight of its central premise: two people, living under the constraints of lockdown, trying to create something meaningful — be it art, a relationship, or simply a calmer, happier dog.
Though Covid restrictions still hover at the periphery of The Heirloom — in a tense late-night rendezvous to pick up Millie in a parking lot or the fraught dash to an emergency vet — the heart of Perie’s film is its raw depiction of two people simply drifting apart. Free of the relentless reminders of sanitizing and mask-wearing that have become stock imagery in so many pandemic films, Petrie’s focus is squarely on the more universal — specifically, the complications and even disintegration of emotional intimacy. The ordinary details of their lockdown existence — eating takeout meals in front of a laptop, aimlessly tidying the apartment, obsessing over the dog’s every move — are at this point far truer and recognizably shared experiences than any depiction of social distancing. By zooming in on the unease and unspoken grievances that can plague a couple beset by prolonged periods of stress — even if entirely anonymous in nature rather than dramatically global — The Heirloom transcends the trope of “pandemic movie” and becomes something far more relatable: a quietly devastating study of how close quarters can transform even the smallest cracks in a relationship into unnavigable canyons
DIRECTOR: Ben Petrie; CAST: Grace Glowicki, Ben Petrie, Matt Johnson, Leah Doz; DISTRIBUTOR: Factory 25; IN THEATERS: March 21; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 27 min.
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