Verbal abuse crushes hope in a house of wounded souls
Macedonian-born, Australian-raised director Goran Stolevski is known for making rigorous, messy films, intruding upon his characters’ lives with his hand-held camera. His latest in-your-face exploration of the difficulties of relationships is “Housekeeping for Beginners,” which is filled with interesting, desperate people living in the same house, looking for belonging and a sense of family when life, so far, has offered them none.
The household is run by Dita (a fantastic Anamaria Marinca), a middle-aged woman whose live-in girlfriend Suada (Alina Serban) is diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. Dita is a woman who cares — she’s a social worker — and seems to be a bit of a soft touch. Her household includes the abrasive and mercurial Toni (Vladimir Tintor), who brings home an added mouth to feed in 17-year-old boyfriend Ali (Samson Selim), and Suada’s two daughters, teenage Vanesa (Mia Mustafa) and 8-year-old Mia (Dzada Selim).
It’s important to note that the film is not set in San Francisco; this is North Macedonia, where homosexuality is one step short of illegal. When Dita is presThe sured by Suada to adopt her children, she must marry Toni to qualify for adoption, a sad situation for both.
The most frustrating element of “Housekeeping for Beginners” is that no one in that house is ever nice to each other, except in rare quiet moments. Every day is an exercise in volatility — loud arguments that occasionally veer into physical confrontation and constant emotional abuse. This is not a healthy household.
Stolevski obviously wants us to sympathize with these wounded characters who have been shunted aside by a cruel society, but that’s hard to do when they are so verbally cannibalistic. If I were Dita, I would have tossed them out of my house years ago.
Still, the acting is superb. The difficult stepmother-daughter dynamic between Dita and Vanesa is nuanced and compelling, and Ali brings a benign acceptance that the others would do well to adopt.
Stolevski, who is openly gay, is much admired for his second film, “Of an Age” (2023), about an intense but brief gay relationship. His desire to be uncompromising is admirable, but in “Housekeeping for Beginners,” the drudgery of everyday life tramples the hope.