North Macedonia’s submission to the 2024 “Best International Feature Film” category, “Housekeeping for Beginners” (2023), focuses on how one person’s cancer diagnosis has a ripple effect on Dita (Anamaria Marinca) and everyone who lives in Dita’s house. Goran Stolevski’s third film proves that the director/writer is consistent in telling riveting, nuanced human stories that will leave you wanting more. Stop reading this review, watch it and come back because it is best if you watch it knowing as little as possible.
I went into “Housekeeping for Beginners” knowing nothing other than suddenly a woman has far more responsibility than she signed up for. I loved Stolevski’s sophomore film “Of an Age” (2022), which was set in Australia. I did not expect this film to be set in North Macedonia and have subtitles, which was a delightful surprise. While watching the film, this ignorant American did not even know where it was set until the credits rolled, and I may not have gotten that right. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, also just known as Yugoslavia, broke up into the following republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia, and Serbia, which includes Kosovo and Vovodina. Stolevski is originally from Macedonia, which is known as the Republic of North Macedonia, and emigrated to Australia. North Macedonia is not the same as Greek Macedonia, which is irrelevant for the purpose of discussing this movie.
“Housekeeping for Beginners” unfolds in a very organic way. There are no random prose dumps to explain characters’ backstories or provide broader context. You will have to deduce what is happening from the way people interact. It opens with Ali (Samson Selim), Vanesa (Mia Mustafi) and the youngest in the house, Mia (Dzada Selim), singing and dancing together. Are they siblings? Is the older girl babysitting with her boyfriend? Siblings? Then Stolevski shows another location where the professionally attired Dita (Anamaria Marinca) leads a sullen, frustrated, and angry Suada (Alina Serban), who is clad in a white tank top. Dita looks like a lawyer or social worker helping Suada navigate bureaucracy, which Dita is doing, but their relationship is also more personal, which leads to Suada asking Dita to take care of her kids if she dies. Toni (Vladimir Tintor) also lives in Dita’s house, is one of the older residents and like Dita, works to financially support the others. There are also three young women who find refuge in Dita’s home: Elena (Sara Klimoska), Teuta (Ajse Useini) and Flora (Rozafa Celaj). You will have to wait to find out the relationship between everyone in the house, and the discovery comes with its own rewards.
As Suada’s prognosis becomes clear, it changes the dynamic under Dita’s roof. Before it is a place where everyone is free to be themselves with only Dita concerned about the practical logistics of survival. Dita occupies the edges of her own home and is the one forced to interact the most with the outside world to insure the household’s survival. This outside contact enables everyone to act without restraint but demands that Dita hide crucial aspects of her life to pass and work in the professional world. It felt as if she was engaging in penance for some unspoken privilege, which Ali alludes to and Suada, a Roma woman (the English name for Roma starts with a “g,” and some consider it a slur), attributes to Dita’s ethnicity. Dita has not allowed herself much room to have human emotions and prioritizes functioning.
After some residents show the strain of added responsibilities, others rise to the occasion and voluntarily shoulder the burden, and one threatens to destroy everything that Dita has created to lash out and exorcise pain. Stolveski does a deft job of creating three-dimensional characters who are simply human and commit horrible acts, which endanger themselves but do not render them villains. For instance, Toni takes umbrage at Dita’s demands because he has worked hard to swim against the tide and live freely, but there is also a whole heap of unexamined toxic masculinity and misogyny influencing his reactions. Everyone was too comfortable with Dita acting as an unwilling mother figure, doing everything and being the adult. When they add more weight to her shoulders, and she finally responds with her own demands, they react disproportionately. In her home, Dita begins to appear more like Suada by wearing tank tops instead of remaining buttoned up. One unlikely resident steps up and becomes the glue holding together the fractured family.
“Housekeeping for Beginners” becomes a tale of two worlds with Dita as the only common denominator between the outside world and her housemates. I’m uncertain if Dita’s home is in the capital, Skopje, but it does appear to be in a respectable place, spacious, some verdant notes, well-kept. Dita’s colleagues deride PC talk and delight in Dita hueing closer to their ideals when she marries a Macedonian man. In contrast, Shutka, the only Roma-run municipality in the world, is crowded and unkept with an invisible underside that plays a pivotal role in the denouement. One of the Roma residents in Dita’s house wants to return to that region, but the reality is grimmer than remembered. There is no infrastructure, and that resident’s family is delighted that they have better opportunities elsewhere. There is no imagined reunion where that resident is welcomed and invited to stay. The most feasible option appears to be Dita’s home. There is also the implication of how systemic caste bias played a role in destabilizing Dita’s world through environmental inequality.
Not since “Lady Macbeth” (2016) has the complexity of privilege been so elegantly explored. The power dynamic shifts every moment. Gay people stay in the closet in the capital and fear legal repercussions if their orientation becomes exposed so a heterosexual with little power can pose a huge threat under the right circumstances. In Shutka, being gay may not be a privileged position, but it can function as a passport into different segments of society without fear of reprisal because gay people are not seen as a threat; however, being a man ensures safety that being a woman, lesbian or heterosexual, does not.
There are some universal forms of bias that create tension within “Housekeeping for Beginners” regarding how authorities treat certain crimes. While being gay is not illegal in North Macedonia, a 2002 Center for Civil and Human Rights survey viewed same sex orientation as a “crime that warranted a jail term.” So when police investigate a spurious allegation, all the residents know that being gay is a liability whereas the sex trafficking of women has no real consequence. Think about the propagators of Pizzagate conspiracy theories who support an admitted sexual harasser and alleged rapist versus the effectiveness of law enforcement’s response to actual sex crimes.
From the opening scene, the first still shot focuses on a crooked painting then the scene becomes dynamic as the family dances. Later scenes will show things as off-kilter: a person choosing to sit in a chair that backs the person whom they are talking to, a couple sitting next to each other in the bottom of the frame then one gradually softens their pose and leans on to the other as an expression of affection and weariness. Most of the scenes in the dining room seem quotidian and forgettable, but after the call to the police, the camera focuses on the other side, a red wall with a person sitting alone at the table. The dining room suddenly symbolizes danger and becomes threatening. “Housekeeping for Beginners” depicts how a shift in perspective, or a lack of balance/functionality is an innate part of life. People are flawed individuals who will act out in damaging, contradictory, human ways while still seeking connection. Balance and harmony are transitory, but the power of emotion and connection can open ones eyes to create a lasting family stronger than blood.