The Heirloom, at first glance, feels like a film that isn’t saying or doing much but is an incredibly reflective, emotional film about relationships and our time during lockdown. Ben Petrie’s film perfectly blurs the line between reality and fiction, while bringing a sensitive nuance to proceedings.

When Eric, a control freak filmmaker, succumbs to his restless partner Allie’s campaign to get a dog, he insists on adopting a rescue. What comes their way is Milly, a traumatised whippet arriving via aeroplane with an unknown past from the Dominican Republic. Eager to master the dog-training process, Eric throws their life into chaos when he is seized by inspiration that spills recklessly across his art and his life, taking Allie and Milly along with him. Meanwhile, Allie’s nostalgia for memories lost to childhood sets loose the wrath of long-suppressed intuitions and the creeping dawn of a deeper calling in her life.

There are moments littered throughout the smashing The Heirloom that just trigger an unreasonable amount of silly joy within you. The beautiful dementedness of Eric’s monologue to Allie, as he proposes making a film about their new companion, is a sight to behold, and under a different score, that could have perfectly played out as a horror film.

But you can tell it is just a man who has become so wrapped up in his struggles with a script that this new “muse” in his life has taken over him so completely that he must find a way to document it. So what better for a filmmaker to do than film it and make it a movie of some sort? The tone and speech patterns that Petrie uses during this speech just crack you up. You realise he has cracked a little under during the stress of lockdown life. Not only do we see it, but Allie does too, and so she can only nod along to the idea, knowing that, for some reason, her partner needs this.

It may as if there is little on the side of drama in this mumblecore dramedy, but it’s sneaky like that. The Heirloom catches you off guard as we see the strain of not only lockdown but also a realisation between our two characters that they are emotionally taking two different roads, culminating in Allie’s slap-in-the-face statement to Eric about her realisation of what a dream meant. There are lines here and there that just stick with you, with one being when Allie tells Eric that she isn’t a movie. It hits you and shows the tension that has been present throughout the entirety of The Heirloom.

It’s these moments you see how good a performer both Ben Petrie and Grace Glowicki are. You feel those moments like a punch to the gut; you feel their relationship as if you know them personally. There is a tremendous authenticity to their performances, even if they are slightly heightened. You get it, and you relate to it. We see two people who are not in control of their lives, although they want to be. It’s a film about being present for one another. The fact that potentially so much was taken from the real situation Petrie and Glowicki went through with their own dog means you can never be sure, even in this extremely meta version, when fiction ends and reality begins. You wonder this throughout the entire film, but more on that later.

Then we have to take into consideration that we know Eric is documenting and, at times, recreating their story for his “film”, so when there is a serious heart-to-heart between the two and the fourth wall is broken partially, you are left to wonder if this “scene” is part of Erics film or is it part of Ben Petries actual film. We have seemingly clear moments of this, such as the repeat takes of Allie exclaiming that Milly has peed; you question whether that is actually multiple takes or if it is, in fact, Eric trying to visualise the perfect moment in his own mind. We even have a moment, such as Allie coming in acting excited as Eric tells her the news of the possibility of getting Milly. Yet, we only believe that scene is a recreation due to Petrie, Brendan Mills and Michael Harmon’s cuts to Petrie on his computer. So, our whole concept of what is real in this version of the story is all over the place, which is immensely clever and intriguing.

What The Heirloom, Petrie, and Glowicki do best here is show us the true feeling of those lockdowns. A hurry to get things done and organised (even if it’s to get a dog) before it kicks in. The irregularness of being confined for such a long period. Importantly, they don’t highlight this as “boredom”; they show us what it did feel like. We are not fully ourselves, and we are doing what we can to entertain and adjust to the situation.

Eric, ever the dominant one in the relationship, is adamant that there needs to be structure to Milly’s training as that control that he generally has as a filmmaker has been taken from him due to lockdown, so he listens incessantly to recordings of how to show dominance over Milly, to the point that he loses himself in the behaviour philosophy and tries to regain the control of his situation by proposing the film. Even when he gets his way, that voice of dog commands is now in his head, and he hears them everywhere; he has an underlying self-hatred that he can’t shake, especially when he sees how connected Allie and Milly are. He knows his brain will not allow such a connection to form that way with Milly, so he resorts to what he believes will work but knows it won’t, thus the continual “bad” we hear.

With Allie, it seems as if she has just gone along with what Eric wants, but so she isn’t as strict on the behavioural tasks with her pet. She is withdrawing into her past, a safe place of nostalgia, which you can never blame her for, as we all did it during lockdown. She sees Milly for what she is, a sacred trauma-ridden Whippet that just needs patience and love. So she provides that. Only then does she realise that she also needs that, and questions whether Eric can be the person to provide it for her. Can he adjust and be someone she needs him to be as she goes deeper into her 30s? Or does she need to cut him loose so she can move to the next step of her life?

The Heirloom also gives us possibly the world’s first drone shot, starting from a fresh dog poo and rising up into a wintery Toronto neighbourhood. So, at the very worst, you have that to look forward to in this emotionally sneaky top-notch film.

★★★★

The Heirloom is available digitally starting June 10th.

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