Housekeeping for Beginners is a 2023 film written, directed and edited by Goran Stolevski and a co-production between countries like Australia and Macedonia. It also was selected for the Macedonian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards. It features an almost entirely Roma cast, many of whom were scouted from the streets of Shutka. Stolevski — a Macedonian-Australian and openly gay man — has revealed that his inspiration for the movie was a Facebook photo posted by Australian filmmaker Tony Ayres which captured Ayres and his partner alongside eight queer women in a Melbourne share house. If Stolevski’s intention for the film was to “capture” like the photograph, then I would say it was done perfectly.
Housekeeping for Beginners is set under the roof of Dita’s (Anamaria Marinca) unstable household which has become a sanctuary for the queer individuals who are outcast by Macedonian society. Dita provides for her girlfriend Suada (Alina Serban) and Suada’s two daughters, Vanesa (Mia Mustafi) and Mia (Dzada Selim), as well as Toni (Vladimir Tintor) and his one-night stand turned committed relationship, Ali (Samson Selim).
After the loss of their matriarch, the unconventional family unit becomes restructured once again; marriages are faked, birth certificates are forged, and teens run away. The household becomes buried in grief, leading the rebellious teenager Vanesa to seek love in a disturbing marriage proposal and later, a brothel. Meanwhile, her five-year-old sister Mia draws on the walls at home and turns to Ali to answer her innocent questions above love.
Throughout the film, each character seems to be at complete odds with one another. Despite their differences, at the centre of each character is a shared desire for belonging and a search for love. It is this deep desire that sees them hurt one another and blind themselves for the sake of pursuing false hopes, ones which are often self-destructing. However, the dysfunctional family is ultimately bound together by their unending need for each other’s support because, as Dita says, “It doesn’t go away, the needing. Even when you get old. It’s a nasty business”.
Housekeeping for Beginners is definitely a film for the lovers of a character-driven plot; it centres around heavy dialogue and a multitude of characters. At the height of its chaos, it features five key conflicting personalities and an array of others, allowing the film some commentary on almost every social illness–poverty, racism, violence, substance abuse, sexual abuse, discrimination. At times, this creates an overwhelming viewing experience as there are more conflicts than can be resolved in 107 minutes. However, that is what makes the film such a confronting mirror to our complex humanity. Our problems multiply before we have time to solve them and our lives don’t abide by the hero’s journey because most of us are not heroes.
The incredible performances in the film compensate for the fact that most of the character conflicts remain unresolved. Usually, unresolved plot lines make for an unsatisfying and irritating ending. However, my viewing experience of Housekeeping for Beginners (2023) has been added to the list of rare occasions when the threshold between reality and fiction, guarded by the cinema screen, has melted away and I forgot I was watching a film. For this reason, I understood Stolevski’s film as more of a vignette of chaos, rather than a resolution of it.
Housekeeping for Beginners (2023) is currently in cinemas nationwide.