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When we think of Australian cinema, one of the films that springs to mind is an iconic film about a family, a house, and the housing crisis the local community finds themselves in. A house is a home, or so goes the iconic 1997 comedy, The Castle. Oddly, Australian cinema has not returned to the well of housing-crisis-comedies, an oddity given how pointed and frustratingly timeless the reality of the housing market is.
Thankfully, Zoe Pepper mines the generational wealth divide for all its worth in the acidic WA-made comedy Birthright. Cory (a perfectly cast deadpan Travis Jeffery) and his very pregnant wife Jasmine (an equally deadpan and delightful Maria Angelico) are getting the shaft from their rental. Stuffed in more ways than one, they load up all they can into the boot of their car and trundle off to the sanctuary of mum and dad, Cory's baby-boomer parents, Richard and Lyn (pitch perfect casting of Michael Hurst and Linda Cropper).
Cory's parents live in a swanky abode in a leafy green suburb somewhere in Perth. Their house has more rooms than they need, with costly, barely used furniture swaddled in sheets and blankets to protect them from dust. Their home feels, well, a little soulless, like the misused result of decades of wealth accumulation; by any other name they might be called 'hoarders'.
And that's partly why Cory and Jasmine have come knocking; they not only need a home, but they also need good old Dick and Lyn to make good with their duty as parents and give space for the younger generation to come through and live their life. Ah, but of course, these are baby-boomer parents who managed to pull themselves up from their own bootstraps and buy a house on nothing at all and have a family and secure a well paying job and now, after all, they should be able to enjoy their retirement because it's what they worked hard for all these years. They deserve it. I can hear your teeth gritting in frustration.
And so can Zoe Pepper, with the seasoned theatre talent comfortably making the shift to filmmaking and bringing a bitterly comedic story to life in the process. Slipping into a slightly misguided analogy for a moment, Birthright is the result of spritzing an acid dressing over an aged Women's Weekly Sunday salad recipe. It cuts through the generational divide, burning it down in a manner that will have you picking up the phone to call your parents after the credits have rolled. And no, you're not calling them to say how much you want to spend time with them or tell them how much you love them, but rather to say 'how can you not see what your generation has done to us.'
We turn to art and cinema to make sense of the now and provide a sanity check for our shitty situations. We watch films like Birthright to get validation from an external source, leading us to Leo DiCaprio this shit and point at the screen and say 'hey, that's me,' all the while popcorn flies out of our mouths as we can stifle the laughter. Birthright is so utterly refreshing in the manner that it swings for the fences, hitting a six that is one for the history books. I laughed from start to finish, and was left reeling from a brutal climax that turns everything up to eleven.
I couldn't help but unleash my praise on Zoe in the following interview, one which explores the foundations of the film, its relevance to now, the casting process, and the joys of bringing dark comedy to life on screen. I also apply a misreading to the film about a rock that Richard holds during one scene, summoning the name of one Scott Morrison, and alluding to his infamous embrace of coal in Parliament House.
Birthright is the kind of film that'll shine with an audience, and for Aussies in Sydney, they'll get the chance to do so on Thursday 12 June, with two more sessions on 13 and 14 June at the Sydney Film Festival. Check out SFF.org.au for tickets and more details.
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