A salesman who tries to sell his miraculous cleaning machine to a sick woman and her skeptical daughter, on the day that the woman asked her daughter to help her end her own life.
‘Relics’ is a film that will take you though several extremes while magnificently switching between comedy and drama without losing a beat in the compound of the story. The film is about a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman who gets caught up in the battle of wills between an ailing woman and her stubborn daughter. His hopes of connecting to the younger woman are tempered by her mother’s heartfelt request in this surprising dramedy about the heartbreaks and hilarity of life.
In its own offbeat way, Relics addresses the issues of caring for elder parents, guilt, responsibility, and the right of a terminally ill person to decide when he or she will die. In my story, it takes a believer like the salesman to help a sick woman get her last wish – to die with dignity – and to free her daughter from having to make a terrible decision.
Jennie Allen certainly touches a sensitive issue in ‘Relics’ in a very subtle way. The soft comedic mix to the severity of the situation lets the brain process smoothly the heartfelt dilemma that’s becoming a strong subject all over the world.
Everywhere we look, the issue of assisted dying is making headlines. The California State Senate recently cleared the way for their “right to die” bill, the Canadian Supreme Court unanimously decided to allow physician-assisted death for patients with incurable medical conditions, while proposed legislation about the use of sedating medications at the end of life in France, lawsuits against bans on assisted death in New York, and proposed legislation in many countries all illustrate a groundswell of change.
