07/09/2023 - VENICE 2023: There’s always time to laugh, cry and sing along in Goran Stolevski’s latest, one of the best films on the Lido this year

Anamaria Marinca and Vladimir Tintor (centre) in Housekeeping for Beginners

In Housekeeping for Beginners [+see also:
interview: Goran Stolevski, Alina Serban
film profile], shown in Venice’s Orizzonti, Goran Stolevski laughs, cries and shows that the only way to sing along is with a vacuum-cleaner hose. Along the way, he also delivers one of the best films on the Lido this year.

That his latest is good isn’t exactly surprising. Macedonian-born Stolevski, among the most exciting filmmakers out there, is the same twisted mind responsible for You Won’t Be Alone [+see also:
film review
film profile] – a Sundance highlight that managed to combine body horror with melancholy, and rats served as snacks. What is surprising is how much joy he finds in this story of unlikely parents and reluctant children.

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Dita (Anamaria Marinca) lives in Skopje with her partner Suada (Alina Serban) and her two daughters, plus a trio of friends who sometimes sleep with each other and sometimes don’t, and Toni (Vladimir Tintor), who has just brought another boy home. It’s a full house, a loud one, with three conversations and at least one fight happening at any given time. But then things change. Dita, never too maternal to begin with, is left to raise the girls, including teenager Vanesa, and Toni needs to help out. The problem is, nobody has told him yet.

Stolevski deals with plenty of tragedies here, big and small, so the fact he still makes it funny is a real wonder: Housekeeping for Beginners features some of the best bickering this reviewer has heard in a very long time. But it never goes broad, even though the main concept alone – two queer people marrying for the sake of their family and soon drowning in lies – sounds like some old-fashioned farce. The Birdcage it’s not, that’s for sure.

Stolevski has a sense of humour, but it’s tender, empathetic and honest, as everyone gets to misbehave at least once. These are not some oppressed angels, rebelling against the world: they make mistakes, they can be violent, they throw laptops from balconies and won’t even apologise – probably because they still work. He choreographs these messy group scenes so well, making them easy to follow, even though someone is always screaming or popping balloons. They care for each other and – this not being a US movie – they don’t have to say, “I love you” every time they go out.

In a way, it’s a true gathering of outcasts, be it because of their sexual tastes or Romani roots, but they don’t seem that way. Stolevski shows real people who hurt those they love all the time and smoke way too much, and who they sleep with – well, that’s their business. It doesn’t define them. When they lose their cool, and it happens often, it’s on them – there is nobody else to blame. You still love them, though. After a while, after two hours have elapsed, they feel like family, too.

Written and edited by Goran Stolevski, Housekeeping for Beginners is a Macedonian-Polish-Croatian-Serbian-Kosovar production staged by List Production, Madants, Kinorama, Sense Production, Industria Film, Film i Väst, Common Ground Pictures and Causeway Films in association with Tango Entertainment, New Europe Film Sales (also in charge of the international sales) and the Adelaide Film Festival.