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Filmed on an iPhone, this balloon trot drama does not maintain its promises.
By Alissa Wilkinson
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It is attractive to see the administrators play with the type of film generation that we all carry in our pockets. Long before making “Anora”, Sean Baker turned his crazy comedy “Tangerine” on an iPhone. Steven Soderbergh also made, for his mystery “undersae” and the sports drama “High Flying Bird”. The poetic short film by Charlie Kaufman “Chacales y Liernagas” shot with a Samsung Galaxy, and the next Danny Boyle zombie movie “28 years later” also made with an iPhone. And of course, dozens of documentaries use photographs taken with phones, for apparent reasons.
Innovation in cinema has been driven through technological advances; Reducing the length of cameras made it less difficult to shoot on location or in motion and the advent of sound, color and virtual cameras fundamentally replaced the way moviemakers think. So it makes sense that incredibly light, powerful, and portable cameras are provided through smartphones would enter the mix. The challenge, however, is to make a movie that other people need to see, anything that stands out from anything else they can do themselves. The authors I discussed above sell it for the maximum part, the exclusive Look and lightness of the camera to the merit of their stories. The form follows the service of the film.
Unfortunately, “Inheritance” is not one of those. Directed by Neil Burger (who made “The Illusionist,” “Limitless,” and the first “Divergent”), who wrote the screenplay with Olen Steinhauer, it is definitely trying for something: a globe-hopping tale of intrigue and betrayal, starring Phoebe Dynevor in a very un-“Bridgerton” role. She is Maya, a sullen and directionless young woman who spent the last year or two caring for her dying mother. Now her mother’s gone, and Maya is both grieving and exhilarated by the newfound freedom.
When her estranged father (Rhys Ifans) shows up at the funeral, Maya wants nothing to do with him. But then he offers her a job that pays well and sounds glamorous, showing rich clients around different cities while they wait for some kind of real estate transaction to clear. She hops on a plane with him to Cairo.
Maya sets off on a multi-continental pursuit of her father, or maybe a wild-goose chase. She’s always trying to figure out what’s going on. We’re already a step or two ahead of her.
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