REVIEW: Domakinstvo za pocetnici [Housekeeping for Beginners] [2024]

Rating: R | Runtime: 107 minutes
Release Date: April 5th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Focus Features
Director(s): Goran Stolevski
Writer(s): Goran Stolevski

Say you’ll be their mother.

Set in a makeshift LGBTQ+ one-home commune, Goran Stolevski’s Housekeeping for Beginners commences with an introduction and a goodbye. The former arrives courtesy of Ali (Samson Selim), a young Roma man who finds himself unable to leave after hooking up with one of the permanent residents in Toni (Vladimir Tintor). The latter concerns a terminal cancer diagnosis for Suada (Alina Serban), partner to the home’s owner Dita (Anamaria Marinca). So, there’s a joyous mood as Suada’s daughters (Mia Mustafi’s Vanesa and Dzada Selim’s Mia) and the other three women lodgers poke fun at Ali and a somber one once death inevitably comes.

The film then is about what happens next. Dita, a white social worker mostly dealing with Roma clients on welfare, never wanted to be a mother. That she fell in love with a woman who already had two children was fine because she could exist more on the fringes as the girls’ friend rather than disciplinarian. But now it’s on her. And more than just fulfilling a promise to care for them, the act itself comes with the challenge of having no real avenue towards legal guardianship. And while a forged birth certificate here and a “fake” marriage there might get the paperwork in order, Vanesa’s pain and frustration makes it so she’s one bad night away from calling the cops and saying she was kidnapped.

This isn’t therefore an easy road. How can it be when you have the white/Roma dynamic in a racist country and a house full of gay men and lesbians trying to bridge that gap while said country proves intolerant too. Dita’s life is thrown upside down insofar as stepping up to try and do right by Suada—thankfully with the help of Ali (who is great with little Mia) and the other women. Toni is forced to pretend he’s straight to keep up appearances, growing madder by the day in a sort of reversal of the usual toxic masculinity men lean into when “emasculated.” And Vanesa is struggling to find her place while grieving—is it with this white woman her mother loved or the Roma grandmother she barely knows or the boy who says he wants to marry her?

A real slice of life drama, Housekeeping for Beginners proves a steady stream of unfortunate events caused by an escalating sense of being trapped despite their “prison” being the one place that actually gives them freedom. Everyone does and says things in the heat of the moment that they don’t mean, uncertain if the tenuous bonds holding them together will be broken at the slightest sign of trouble. Because that’s where Vanesa is ultimately coming from. She’s testing her boundaries. She’s steeling herself to the inevitable day when Dita kicks her and Mia to the curb regardless of there being zero evidence to support the assumption.

It’s a strong character study as a result with fantastic performances by all (special mention to Marinca and Mustafi doing the heavy lifting and Selim’s abundance of pure heart). And I really liked the subversion of what’s usually played for laughs (gay characters playing straight) being used for survival. They must put on these airs to keep the girls out of the system. Dita and Toni are fulfilling these roles even as the reason they’re doing it (Vanesa) becomes their greatest adversary via rebellious self-sabotage. The more we learn about this world and the contrast between Dita’s white life and the Roma in Shutka, however, the more that tension makes sense. Sometimes a good thing can be too good to be true, but it’s often your belief that you don’t deserve it that makes it that way.