From Omeleto.
A woman with Alzheimer’s struggles to stay home.
COLD HEIR is used with permission from Maxwell Dezell. Learn more at https://linktr.ee/maxwelldezell.
Cecilia is a mother and grandmother who takes care of her granddaughter Alana. But Cecilia is becoming forgetful, as her Alzheimer’s is just setting in. But she is trying to hold on as best as she can, as she fears that her daughter Maria will find it too overwhelming or stressful to care for her, and will put her in a nursing home.
As she grapples with what’s happening, Cecilia finds the lines between past and present blurring. When she forgets her granddaughter at a store, Cecilia and Maria reach a turning point and face difficult decisions.
Directed by Maxwell Dezell from a script co-written with JM Finn, this perceptive short drama chronicles the delicate, difficult struggles of a family coming to terms with the ravages of a terrible disease. Spare and unadorned in its craftsmanship, its quiet tenor nevertheless achieves a poetic resonance, outlining how Alzheimer’s quietly creeps into relationships and lives, until its implications can no longer be put off.
The writing is pared down to the essential details of characters and their choices, with sparse dialogue that illuminates the interdependency of the family and the love at the heart of each relationship. Yet evocative performances by Jaelyn Buffkin as Alana, Anna Newbury as Maria, and Penelope Grover as Cecilia nonetheless convey the wear and tear of time, as Maria finds it harder to care for both her young daughter and her aging mother on her own. She loves her mother but is exasperated by Cecilia’s refusal to take her medicine, and Newbury captures how that frustration is slowly boiling over into deeper resentment and anger.
As Cecilia, Grover’s understated performance balances both an awareness of her condition and a stubbornness in her desire to hold on to her sense of self and her role in the family. Yet her mind begins to retreat into her own world, beautifully conveyed by the dreamy patchwork of images that seep into the film’s elegant, melancholic naturalism. When the narrative’s turning point is reached, Cecilia knows she’s hit a point of no return.
In the end, COLD HEIR gently portrays that devastating realization, when a person knows there’s no escaping the unfolding of a cruel condition like Alzheimer’s. Knowing what must happen, Cecilia faces it with both pain and dignity. She and her daughter know that Cecilia’s journey will take her to places her loved ones cannot follow — though they hope she’ll still be able to feel their love, no matter where her mind travels.
