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Housekeeping for Beginners Movie Review

Housekeeping for Beginners is a 2024 North Macedonian drama film directed by Goran Stolevski. It’s not his best work, but it’s yet another effective, human drama from this incredible director.

This is a movie about a dysfunctional family that is quite colorful – it basically consists of gays and lesbians effectively playing house with each other. This is one of those indie films that are all about an odd, unique family unit and showcasing how they work from the inside. For anybody who has ever seen an independent or foreign film before, the indie sensibilities here will definitely be familiar.

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Certainly this is the most conventional filmmaking effort so far from Stolevski. It lacks the authenticity of his first feature and the emotional power of his sophomore effort. With that being said, it’s still a very good movie. Stolevski operates on such incredible filmmaking levels that even his weakest film to date is going to be miles better than most renowned films from many other directors.

The eclectic cast of different nationalities did wonders to make the film feel authentic as the characters are also ethnically diverse. There is a significant element of racism here as the film depicts the lives of Roma people in Macedonia, the country that has some of their biggest populations. This subject is very well handled, but so is the depiction of LGBT people in the country. All of seemed so authentic, especially the colorful dialogue. For instance, there is a lot of use of the Macedonian word for “faggot”, which may seem odd and/or problematic for Western viewers, but is very grounded in reality for the Balkan states, so it felt super believable.

Anamaria Marinca is wonderful as Dita and she delivered probably the best performance of the bunch. But Samsom Selim and Vladimir Tintor also deserve praise for performing so well this very toxic gay couple. Other characters are somewhat underdeveloped. Housekeeping for Beginners is one of those movies that function superbly as a group in its characterization, but not so much individually as it did not have enough time to properly develop all of them. But the dialogue is so realistic, the themes so well handled and the movie is engaging throughout while also being very well filmed and deftly directed per usual. It is Stolevski’s most chaotic movie yet, but still one that possessed so much warmth and humanity as all of his works do share.

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