‘Housekeeping for Beginners’ Review: Goran Stolevski’s Queer Family Portrait Bursts Onto the Screen With Equal Parts Joy and Fury
Guy Lodge Film Critic Unorthodox family structures yield correspondingly unpredictable drama in “Housekeeping for Beginners,” a vital, febrile multi-character study that further confirms writer-director Goran Stolevski as a talent to be reckoned with.
Departing radically from the poise of his folk-horror debut “You Won’t Be Alone” and the gentle intimacy of its swift follow-up “Of an Age,” this study of domestic, romantic and generational conflicts in a crowded queer household instead embraces a spirit of antic chaos, both in subject matter and jagged, hit-the-ground-running execution.
Selected as North Macedonia’s international Oscar submission shortly after its premiere in Venice’s Horizons strand, the film has already been picked up by Focus Features for its Stateside release, which speaks to the crossover appeal of its offbeat but energizing storytelling.
Following the Melbourne-set “Of an Age,” “Housekeeping for Beginners” sees the Macedonian-born, Australia-based Stolevski returning to the motherland — not the historical back country of “You Won’t Be Alone,” but the bustling, unequal social landscape of contemporary Skopje, where put-upon healthcare worker Dita (Anamaria Marinca) shares her suburban house with an assortment of waifs and strays.
