Until the night of the MIFF programme launch I had no idea “Birthright” even existed. Thankfully, at said launch, MIFF played the trailer for the film to highlight some of the coming offerings at this year's festival. To say that the trailer played like gangbusters would be an understatement, as everyone was in hysterics by the end, and I knew that this was definitely a film that I now would be seeing. To my eyes, it seemed to be riffing on the same kind of blackly comic atmosphere seen in Joe Dante's “The 'burbs”, a film that I think is severely underrated in just how great and demented it actually is.
When director Zoe Pepper introduced “Birthright”, she described it as being about “inter-generational inequity that is so prevalent in this country, but so ripe for satire”. For those confused by what she means, the film looks at just how hard it is for the young to acquire their own property today, compared to back in their parent's day when buying a house was (presumably) so easy and affordable. I immediately knew this film would appeal to me because of my own life, and a long running in-joke amongst our family where we all say that we (myself, my brother and our two wives) are waiting for our parents to die so we can sell off their house and finally live care-free off the money we make from it. My family's penchant for dark comedy also adds though that knowing our luck, our parents will end up outliving us both!!
If you find any of the above humour shocking, then “Birthright” will not be for you, as this level of black comedy is prevalent throughout the film, and at times it is outrageously funny. What makes it so funny though is because the story rings true and reflects society today and the housing crisis we are going through here in Australia. Brilliantly though, Zoe Pepper tells her story in a way where you understand both couple's points of view. These days so many adult children are moving back in with their parents because the cost of finding their own place is so high. However the timing of this seems to coincide with the moment just after their parents have retired, after working all their lives, so they just want to sit back and enjoy everything they have worked hard for....not go back to the beginning to look after their children again. From the children's perspective, they kind of feel like they are “owed” a piece of what their parents have (thus the title) particularly because it is so hard to achieve the same today. There is a moment in the film when Cory's father, Richard, is disgusted by where his son's life has ended up and that he doesn't have his own place. He explains to Cory that when he turned eighteen his father gave him $10,000 and he used that money to build everything he has today. As such, when Cory turned eighteen, he did the same thing and gave him $10,000 too but he wasted it on travelling the world and getting an arts degree. Cory pleads with his father that that amount of money today is just not enough (which is true, you get very little today with $10,000 compared to our parents time), but his father's reasoning that the youth's priorities today are in the wrong place, also isn't wrong.
What is so great about “Birthright” is how the comedy (and the stakes) increases as it goes along, the more the parents are being put out in their own home, whilst at the same time the kids feel they are being hard done by and are not asking for anything unreasonable. It starts when Jasmine, who is heavily pregnant, has a bad back spasm while sleeping in Cory's old bunk bed from his childhood. Cory demands for her own health and that of their unborn child, that Jasmine must sleep in his parent's bed from now on. The moment Cory whips the covers off to evict his father from his own bed, exposing the fact that he is completely naked underneath, is hilarious! When Jasmine lays next to Richard to sooth her aching back, he gives her a look that would kill and says “Get. Out. Of. My. Bed” in a terrifying voice. And this is just the beginning, with tensions continuing to rise between the two couples until it goes to a whole other level when Cory and Jasmine are caught fornicating whist wearing Richard's favourite leather jacket. “You don't fuck in my jacket!!!!” he yells, as he violently rips it off his son's back mid-thrust. Very, very funny stuff indeed. The final straw though is when the parents realise that the youngsters are planning to stay a lot longer than they have indicted (“Richard!! There's a coffee machine in their car!!!) and the battle between generations begins for the ultimate control of the house.
I mentioned at the start that I felt “Birthright” looked to be the cinematic cousin of Joe Dante's “The 'burbs” and this turned out to be the case, even in the visual style used to tell the story. Pepper uses very classic visual techniques which gives the film a much grander and cinematic look than I am sure their budget allowed, while James Peter Brown's big, loud operatic score has the same effect, making “Birthright” seem much bigger than it actually is. Probably the only give away that this is actually a low-budget film is the fact that it is set all in one location, the house, and that there are only four characters in the film (with a tiny fifth character, a mid-wife, showing up briefly). All four actors are sensational, and very game in doing some ridiculous things within the film, with the two boys being downright silly at times, particularly in the styling of the old father. There is a very funny visual gag, that is barely even mentioned throughout the film by the characters, about just how bad Jasmine is at (over)doing her make-up. It continually gets more and more worse, and ridiculous, until is ends in a great visual homage to David Lynch, the first of at least two within “Birthright”. If I had one criticism in regards to the film, it is that it didn't quite go far enough into the dark and macabre for my liking, just stopping short of being a classic. That might seem a little unfair, because the film is plenty dark; watching a father and son beat the shit out of each other with sticks, all for the right to wear a leather jacket is both very funny and more than a little disturbing when you stop to think about it. It is just that I wanted the film to go that little bit further, really amp up the tension and madness and go for broke.
As funny as “Birthright” is, I think it is the truth of the situation that I found most impressive. So much of the film and conversations had or observations made ring true to the world situation today, it's just explored in a silly, heightened way. Personally, my wife and I are lucky enough to have our own property and bought it when we did, because looking at the market today, I really worry about how my daughters will be able to achieve the same. It is so hard, it almost feels impossible for them. A number of times in the film Cory laments the fact that he did everything right, but has nothing to show for it, meaning he followed the same plan his father did, but that plan is so outdated that it leads only to failure today. Another thing that I loved in “Birthright” is when the parents talk about having so little of things when they grew up, that they looked after everything they had so that it would last. In the film, Richard mentions how he only had the one jacket back then, which made me laugh so loud, because my own parents always harp on about the same thing, while being outraged by the sheer volume of clothes my girls own. This is the brilliance of “Birthright”; everything just rings true (and I related so much of it to my own life, and that of my parents)!!
Overall, I had a fantastic time with “Birthright”; it is a delicious black comedy filled with fun, over-the-top performances that suit the style of the film perfectly. It is a film that continually builds in tension, and at times it is so awkward, but at the same time it never forgets to pack in the laughs. As I have mentioned above though, the greatest part of “Birthright” is how much it all rings true. This is a fantastic new Aussie comedy that both I, and the rest of the audience in my screening, enjoyed immensely.
3.5 Stars.
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