HOUSEKEEPING FOR BEGINNERS - Mark Reviews Movies

Housekeeping for Beginners, Focus Features

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 11, 2024

There's the family you're born into, and then, there's the family you make along the rough road of life. Housekeeping for Beginners is about that second kind of family, comprising people who have it especially tough in a country where the general population is suspicious of or actively discriminatory against them and the government doesn't seem too keen to acknowledge their human rights.

The backdrop of writer/director Goran Stolevski's film is North Macedonia, and the filmmaker doesn't need to explain the legal circumstances or the public sentiment surrounding gay, lesbian, and bisexual people in this place. That harsh reality is baked into the narrative, which gradually reveals its characters, their relationships to each other, and how this superficially complicated household is actually based on the simplest notions of human interaction. They love each other in some way, need each other to survive in a place that has shunned them or would do so if certain people knew the truth, and know they can count on each other if or, likely, when things become difficult.

At first, Stolevski doesn't even bother to explain who these characters are or how they're connected to each other. It's admittedly confusing, but once we do realize who these people are to each other, the initial mystery makes sense on a thematic level. It doesn't matter how these characters are related, if they even are (They aren't, in most cases), because it's the emotional bonds between them that matter more than connections of blood or some official government forms.

The de facto head of the house is Dita (Anamaria Marinca). That's mostly because it is her house, since she has a regular job (Once the identity of her employer becomes clear, it's little wonder why secrecy and deception are more vital than they would be otherwise), and because everyone in that house knows they can depend on her sturdiness, calm, and compassion even under pressure. Marinca's performance internalizes that dedication, as well as the stress and strain of trying to maintain it as a string of problems for the household arise, overlap, and threaten to destroy what she, presumably, has spent years building.

The other people in the house include Toni (Vladimir Tintor) and Suada (Alina Şerban), as well as the latter's two children, the teenaged Vanesa (Mia Mustafi) and younger Mia (Džada Selim). By throwing us right into the home in its usual routine, Stolevski more or less forces us to make certain assumptions about the dynamics of the members of the household. Are Dita and Toni married? Is Suada her younger sister, making the two kids Dita's nieces? How does Ali (Samson Selim), whom we first see playing around and singing with the sisters, figure into this arrangement?

Does any of this actually matter? That becomes the big question here, as Stolevski gradually reveals these relationships, making us re-question our presumptions, but never loses what really ties these characters together. Ali, for example, turns out to be Toni's lover, but that changes nothing about the obvious but mostly unspoken bond that exists between Dita and the man we might perceive as her husband. The same goes for Suada, who is actually Dita's girlfriend, but the core of that relationship—how much Dita wants to help this woman and how Suada pushes back against that support—remains intact, regardless of who they are to each other.

On the surface, Suada seems to need as much support as she can get at the moment. She has been diagnosed with cancer (Even that fact and the extent of the disease are gradually revealed). As one doctor puts it, there's no positive prognosis for any treatment Suada might receive, so she tells Mia that she will need to start referring to Dita as her mother and Toni as her father. This isn't just about making sure the young girl has some emotional foundation after her mother dies. It's a necessity for the kids to ensure that they have some kind of family when Suada is gone, because it's not as if the government will recognize her relationship with Dita in any official capacity or that anyone else will accept this arrangement as a family.

The rest of the film watches as Dita, Toni, and the rest navigate the legal challenges of granting Suada her dying wish and the emotional struggles of trying to keep this family unit together after such a loss. What's most impressive, perhaps, about Stolevski's screenplay is how little overt explaining it needs to do. The characters and relationships are made clear before we learn who and what they actually are, so the arising conflict—how the rebellious Vanesa reacts to both losing her mother and feeling trapped in a situation over which she has no say, for example, as well as how Toni clings to the younger Ali in certain ways—comes from those foundations.

As for the film's political backdrop, it's all revealed through dialogue, such as the casual use of various slurs and how Ali is perceived when he returns to his neighborhood, and the obvious anxiety within Dita when she starts making the deception official, co-workers start to become curious about the sudden changes in her personal life, and the police are called. Tension subtly permeates the entire story—not only because of how tenuous these bonds become in the aftermath of Suada's death, but also on account of the myriad of external threats to the basic stability of this family unit.

Housekeeping for Beginners doesn't need to say or explain much to make its point. This is a family, no matter how "different" it may appear to those outside it. The group may fight as all families do, but it functions together and for each member as all families worth anything must.

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