MIFF 2023 Short Review - We Used to Own Houses

Images courtesy of Common State.

David Robinson-Smith, director of Mud Crab (MIFF 2022), returns to MIFF 2023 with We Used To Own Houses, an explosive cine-poem about the housing crisis. Any renters (probably most of the audience watching) will be engulfed in anger whilst watching. Robinson-Smith again collaborates with Adelaide psychedelic rock band, Wolf & Cub, for the tense and foreboding soundtrack of this short. Robinson-Smith combines poetry, surrealist imagery, and a dramatic soundtrack to summarise the housing zeitgeist of Millennials and Generation Z. 

In the short, we watch a heated exchange between Tenant (Thom Green) and Landlord (Anthony Phelan) as they sit across from each other at a dinner table. The agitated Tenant, seething with rage and fondling a rusty hammer, demands that his landlord read out loud a poem he has written. 

We Used To Own Houses has a distinctly dystopian atmosphere, although its themes reflect a harsh reality: scenes of wall-less bedrooms set in an open field, tenants left exposed to the elements; children sleeping on the floor of a trailer; a man living out of his car; people forced to breathe in “asbestos in (…) godforsaken town[s]”. Robinson-Smith juxtaposes these scenes of domestic struggle against businessmen celebrating with champagne. Repeating: “always three months to the gutter”, Robinson-Smith reminds the audience of how close they are to homelessness in this precarious cost of living crisis. Robinson-Smith highlights the depravity of the comforts of landlords and businessmen in an era of financial precarity for the working class, asserting that “this was done with full intent”.  

Refusing to take responsibility for his role in the housing crisis, the Landlord deflects the tenant’s question: “Did you raise everyone’s rent?”, with “This thing was broken from the start”, blaming the system instead of his position in power as the Landlord over twenty households.

We Used To Own Houses is the epitome of the collective rage Millennials and Generation Z hold at the Baby Boomer generation for the mess they have made of the housing market, and as the generations that no longer can afford to own houses, Millennials and Generation Z are at the epicentre of the housing crisis. “Stare into the void, it won’t meet your gaze”; the Landlord looks away as the Tenant stares into the empty void of his eyes.

Although the Landlord in this short might not take responsibility for the blood on his hands, I’d argue that Robinson-Smith can see a different future for tenants, one in which “the people in the gutters will recognise their means” so that we can “see the stars (…) (and) dream of space”, instead of experiencing the waking nightmare of wondering where we live for the next six months.  

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We Used to Own Houses screened as part of the Accelerator Shorts 1 package at the Melbourne International Film Festival, running in metro cinemas August 3-20 and online August 18-27.

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