‘Housekeeping for Beginners’ Review: It’s a Queer Old Family Time in Macedonia

April 2, 2024

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A couple of beginners (CREDIT: Viktor Irvin Ivanov/© 2023 Focus Features LLC)

Starring: Anamaria Marinca, Alina Șerban, Samson Selim, Vladimir Tintor, Mia Mustafa, Džada Selim, Sara Klimoska, Rozafë Çelaj, Ajse Useini

Director: Goran Stolevski

Running Time: 107 Minutes

Rating: R for Slurs and Awkward/Raucous Sexuality

Release Date: April 5, 2024

What’s It About?: Queer people often end up in misfit, makeshift families, and it doesn’t get much more makeshift than the one in Housekeeping for Beginners. In this Skopje-set feature from Macedonian-Australian director Goran Stolevski, Suada (Alina Șerban) shares a motley house with her girlfriend Dita (Anamaria Marinca); her two daughters from previous relationships, teenage Vanesa (Mia Mustafa) and kindergartener Mia (Džada Selim); and Dita’s gay friend Toni (Vladimir Tintor). Then there’s Toni’s much younger boyfriend Ali (Samson Selim), who gets to stay in the house after his and Toni’s first hookup. There are also a couple of other young women hanging around, but I’ve got to be honest, I’m not entirely sure who they were. Stolevski just drops us right in the thick of the chaos and leaves us to figure it out on our own! Anyway, the crux of the plot is Suada dying from cancer and leaving Vanesa and Mia in Dita’s care. But Macedonia doesn’t exactly have the most progressive LGBTQ rights, so Dita decides that she and Toni should get married for this to actually work. Alas, this isn’t exactly the steadiest arrangement for everyone involved.

What Made an Impression?: Taking Care of Our Own: Call it a parenting instinct, call it an internal feeling of responsibility, or just call it a fundamental sense of decency. But as soon as Suada passes away, Dita goes into Protective Mom mode, and there is nothing standing in her way. And that’s not because she was looking forward to this! She would have much rather that Suada had fought just a little bit harder to stay alive. And Toni’s even more resistant to playing the part of Dad, but he can’t escape that duty when one of the girls gets into trouble. Meanwhile, Ali immediately bonds with Vanessa and Mia, and while I have no idea how they would or should explain what their relationship to him is, he is also now inexplicably connected to the whole brood. When you live in this house, you’re bound at the core to everyone else, even when (perhaps especially when) they’re being huge pains in the ass.
How to Talk to Your Family: Housekeeping for Beginners isn’t just a quietly urgent plea for queer rights, it’s also standing up for the Romani people, the traditionally nomadic ethnic group that have significant modern populations in much of Europe. Several of the characters are Roma, and everyday discrimination is just a fact of life for them. But there’s plenty of energy – sometimes aggressive, sometimes steely and patient – making it clear that it shouldn’t be that way. There’s also plenty of use of a certain word that is generally considered an ethnic slur for the Roma, as well as plenty of use of an f-word slur for gay people. I don’t feel like it’s appropriate for me to use either of those words, but they are uttered in this movie by people who are close to the characters who fit those categories, as well as those characters themselves. Perhaps an in-group member can get away with that kind of language, although it’s not exactly used in the friendliest way. Although I suppose families don’t always like each other even when they defiantly love each other. And I suspect plenty of viewers will recognize their own families in the one in Housekeeping for Beginners.

Housekeeping for Beginners is Recommended If You Like: Marriage Story, Making one of your friends, Macedonian rock music

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Marriages

‘You Won’t Be Alone’ is a Witchy, Bloody Fairy Tale

March 29, 2022

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You Won’t Be Alone (CREDIT: Branko Starcevic/Focus Features)

Starring: Noomi Rapace, Anamaria Marinca, Alice Englert, Carloto Cotta, Félix Maritaud, Sara Klimoska

Director: Goran Stolevski

Running Time: 108 Minutes

Rating: R for Violence, Blood, and Sexaul Content – All Involving Witches

Release Date: April 1, 2022 (Theaters)

You Won’t Be Alone is the type of movie that will make you feel like your mind has been altered if you look away for just a minute. And honestly, that’s a big part of the gnarly appeal. Time jumps ahead without any hand holding, while major characters shapeshift all over the place. Not to mention it’s in a language I’m unfamiliar with, though I’d be surprised if any native Macedonian speakers find it straightforward. So go ahead and watch You Won’t Be Alone while you’re fighting insomnia or in the middle of a bleary-eyed food coma. Or if you’re a recreational drug user, consider this an ideal opportunity to indulge. But even if you’re fully awake and 100% sober, the odds are still high that your brain will be squeezed into another dimension.

For a description a little more straightforward, here’s the logline from the film’s PR team:

“Set in an isolated mountain village in 19th century Macedonia, YOU WON’T BE ALONE follows a young girl who is kidnapped and then transformed into a witch by an ancient spirit. Curious about life as a human, the young witch accidentally kills a peasant in the nearby village and then takes her victim’s shape to live life in her skin. Her curiosity ignited, she continues to wield this horrific power in order to understand what it means to be human.”

My response to reading that after watching the movie is, “Oh. I guess that’s what happened.” If I were pitching it, I would personally probably keep it a little simpler and say something like: the hallucinogenic cultural subconscious of fairy tales spills out phantasmagorically across the European woodlands. The bottom line is, Macedonian-Australian writer-director Goran Stolevski is throwing together a wide array of influences here that are bound to satisfy widescreen-loving cineastes, as well as English majors who tend toward the sylvan supernatural.

If it sounds like I’m being vague about what actually happens in this movie, well, that’s because I’m a little wary of describing anything concretely for fear of totally misinterpreting everything. But don’t let that scare you away! Sometimes it’s okay to let a film confound you, and it’s also totally okay to ask someone else what happened. And if your buddies don’t know either, you can try to figure it out together! After all, you shouldn’t have to feel alone while watching You Won’t Be Alone.

You Won’t Be Alone is Recommended If You Like: Midsommar, The Witch, Grimm fairy tales, Terrence Malick

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Witches

In ‘The Old Guard,’ Immortality is a Burden and a Blessing

July 14, 2020

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THE OLD GUARD – Charlize Theron as ÓAndy” (CREDIT: Aimee Spinks/Netflix)

Starring: Charlize Theron, Kiki Layne, Matthias Schoenarts, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Harry Melling, Van Veronica Ngo, Anamaria Marinca

Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood

Running Time: 125 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: July 10, 2020 (Netflix)

I’m trying something out with some of my recent movie reviews in which I ask myself, “Does this movie make me want to do what the movie is about?” So therefore I ask of you, The Old Guard, “Do you make me to be immortal?” To which I answer, “No, you do not.” But in the interest of fairness, I must acknowledge that Charlize Theron and her crew aren’t quite immortal, so really I should be asking, “Do I want to live for thousands of years and then become suddenly, unpredictably vulnerable to death?” To which I would then respond, “Not particularly.” But I don’t really suppose that The Old Guard is advocating for immortality or near-immortality. If anything, it wants us to ask ourselves, “Will I take advantage of my gifts to transcend myself and make the world a better place?” And my answer in that case is, “Of course!” It takes a while to get that point, though.

I give The Old Guard 3 Bullet Wounds out of 5 Millennia.