‘Housekeeping for Beginners’ Review — A Heartfelt Dramedy for the Very Soul

The Big Picture

• Housekeeping for Beginners
  features moving performances, particularly from its young actors, who elevate the narrative.
• Authentic portrayal of the LGBTQ+ community adds depth and relatability to the story.
• Some core relationships feel underdeveloped and unclear.

A chosen family is one of the most powerful things you can have. Surrounding yourself with a group of people you’re just as close to (and in some cases, even closer to than) those you share DNA with is extremely special. It’s an experience that many in the LGBTQ+ community are particularly familiar with, with homophobia and disownment still unfortunately rampant in today’s society. Goran Stolevski’s Housekeeping for Beginners takes this beloved trope and complicates it, as those who make up this unconventional family unit didn’t exactly choose to be part of it. It’s more forced family than found family, and it’s all the better for it, stripping itself of any oversimplified saccharine sentimentality to embrace the chaos and tap into something real.

What Is ‘Housekeeping for Beginners’ About?

We start with Suada (Alina Serban), a tough, fiery single mother at the doctor’s office with her more reserved and buttoned-up girlfriend Dita (Anamaria Marinca), though they often say they are cousins due to the discrimination and lack of protection for queer people. It’s immediately obvious that all is not well, as the scene is permeated with tension. Eventually, we discover that Suada has pancreatic cancer, and she’s not hopeful about the prognosis nor interested in treatment.

Suada passes away relatively early in the movie, leaving Dita to care for her two daughters, who share many aspects of Suada’s strong personality. There’s rebellious teenager Vanesa (Mia Mustafi), who’s in a hurry to grow up, frequently smoking, drinking, and getting into fights over older boys, and young Mia (Dzada Selim), who’s loud and outspoken even at the tender age of five. But Dita doesn’t have to do it alone. She has help in the form of her brash housemate Toni (Vladimir Tintor) and Toni’s much younger lover, the sensitive, 19-year-old Ali (Samson Selim). Together, they all must learn to live with grief — and each other.

‘Housekeeping for Beginners’ Throws Us Into the Narrative Deep End

Housekeeping for Beginners is undoubtedly a character-focused film, and it takes a while to understand who everyone is and how they relate to one another. We are thrown into the middle of their tangled web right away, and while it sets the frenzied tone perfectly, it can be confusing and difficult to follow at times. You never want an exposition dump, of course, but Stolevski chooses to withhold certain seemingly basic details until much later in the movie — something that ultimately doesn’t feel necessary or additive to the viewing experience.

Many such details are never revealed to us at all. I found myself curious about how Suada and Dita met and how long they’d been together. The fact we get so little background about this core relationship makes it difficult to put some key moments between them into context — for example, when Suada tells her children that, from now on, she is nothing to them and that Dita is their mother or when she threatens self-harm unless Dita promises to take on that role. Tonally, those scenes feel slightly off as-is, though they could very well make sense if we were privy to more of their history. The same goes for Dita and Toni’s dynamic. They have so little interaction that it’s not totally clear why Toni lives with Dita for free — especially when, during an argument, she seems bitter that she’s taking care of him.

Instead, we spend much of our time on other dynamics — for better and for worse. In addition to our main characters, there are also several supporting characters in the form of other people who live in the house as members of the extended chosen family. While they do provide some laughs, particularly during Dita and Toni’s awkward wedding scene, they eat up precious screentime, especially during the crucial dinner when Suada is still alive. The other housemates aren’t bad characters in and of themselves, but in an already loud, crowded movie, they add noise and take up space the film can’t afford to give them, which in turn makes the central relationships too thinly drawn.

There are a few supporting characters that do feel like they add valuable texture and insight into the core family unit — namely, Vanesa’s grandmother. Growing more irritated with Dita, Vanesa proclaims she wants to live with her instead. Tired of arguing, Dita decides to give her exactly what she asks for, taking her to Shutka to grant her wish and drop her off. However, it quickly becomes clear that isn’t going to work out. Vanesa’s grandmother’s house is loud and chaotic, and she’s in no condition to properly take for a teenager. Dita knows this will be the case — she’s presumably well aware of what the woman is like from Suada’s stories, and Vanesa hasn’t talked to her grandmother in years — which is why she allowed it to teach her a lesson in the first place. In turn, the audience has a pretty good idea about what’s going to unfold as well. Still, that doesn’t make it any less heartbreaking to see it slowly dawn on Vanesa throughout her trip there. There’s a petulance to the request, but there’s a childlike innocence and naiveté to it, too — to the hope that there’s an easy fix. It starts a chain reaction of events where Vanesa must learn to grow up quickly and painfully.

‘Housekeeping for Beginners’ Is Elevated By Its Young Talent

When Housekeeping for Beginners does flesh its dynamics out, it really soars. Dita’s relationship with Vanesa is particularly meaty. Mustafi is an extremely talented actress with an intense, captivating charisma you can’t look away from. She’s simultaneously dangerous and vulnerable — and perhaps even more dangerous when she’s vulnerable. Vanesa is able to push all the right buttons to bring out the worst in the usually logical, even-tempered Dita, which in turn brings out the best in the film. They emerge as the central connection in the film, and the place we leave them in at the end is pitch-perfect — hopeful but realistic.

Selim is an absolute natural, giving one of the strongest performances by a child actor I’ve ever seen. She’s extremely confident, infusing every scene she’s in with energy and youthful innocence. She frequently serves as comedic relief, but she nails the dramatic moments, too. The scenes where she cries out for her mother are positively heart-wrenching and have a rawness that transcends the emotionally manipulative feeling many other films that catalog the mourning of children seem to exploit.

“It’s a different kind of love but just as strong,” Ali tells her about Dita and Toni’s relationship, “the strongest.” One can’t help but think he’s also talking about the love Dita and Toni have for her — to sacrifice parts of who they truly are to provide the best life possible for Mia. It’s tender, wise words like this that help make Ali the heart of the film. Not only is he gentle with Mia, but he and Vanesa are close in age and have a similar interest in travel. Ali and Dita take on similar roles in their romantic relationships, as Toni and Suada are stronger — sometimes even domineering — personalities. Therefore, the two of them look out for each other as well. Ali is not only a compelling character but a crucial one, as he acts like a bridge to everyone, able to connect in different ways. Selim flawlessly embodies the role.

‘Housekeeping for Beginners’ Handles Social Issues With Authenticity

Housekeeping for Beginners touches on several serious topics: namely, racism and homophobia through the lens of North Macedonian culture. As white people, Dita and Toni have certain privileges that Suada and her children aren’t afforded, which frustrates her. She snaps at a doctor for his racism toward a Romani patient and recalls being graded unfairly in school. The film doesn’t ignore the fact she and Dita are an interracial couple and that Toni is a white man, even having Suada use this to her advantage to give her girls a better life when she’s gone. It shows how clever and resourceful Suada is, but it also highlights her unjust treatment.

The same can be said of the way the film handles LGBTQ+ issues. When Dita gets married to Toni for the sake of the children, she’s met with happiness and praise from friends and colleagues — something that feels like a punch to the gut, considering she would not be met with the same response if she was open about her relationship with Suada. Ali knows that he will eventually need to get married to a woman someday but plans on still having relations with men behind her back. It’s pretty bleak. However, the way that the queer characters interact with each other is anything but. They often tease each other, reclaiming and throwing out slurs, roasts, and dark jokes. The film manages to capture the specific way queer communities communicate with one another and the unique chemistry between them in a way few others have. The companionship and solidarity between a lesbian and gay man is especially rare and beautiful to see as well.

Housekeeping for Beginners centers on messy characters and relationships. At times, it can feel like a bit of a messy film, too, with some of its relationships not as clear or developed as they could be. But there’s a lot of love in this film, and there’s a lot to love about it, too.

Housekeeping for Beginners is now available to stream on VOD in the U.S.

WATCH ON VOD