A small town in the mountains. Little girls Ruth and Lucille are dropped off at a house of the grandmother by their mother who then drives off with her car into the sea, committing suicide. A decade later, Ruth and Lucille are teenagers raised by their grandmother, but then their eccentric aunt Sylvie shows up to take care of them. Local people are puzzled by her unusual behavior, as she sometimes takes a nap on a bench in the park or collects a house full of newspapers. After an argument with Ruth, Lucille leaves the house to live with someone else. Ruth and Sylvie remain living alone in the house. One night, when the Sheriff insists that Ruth should live with him and his wife, Sylvie sets her house on fire and flees with Ruth across the bridge with the railway tracks, aiming to take any train out of there.
Bill Forsyth's first US movie, "Housekeeping" is a peculiar comedy-drama that cannot quite be pinned down as to what it is, which is a reason many didn't understand it during its premiere. Using a minimalist style, with quiet, low-key scenes that depict the slow pace and uneventful mentality of this desolate mountain town, Forsyth crafts an unassuming little film that contemplates about the difference between a settled-planned existence and an aimless, elusive existence embodied in aunt Sylvie (excellent Christine Lahti): one cannot quite pin her down because she represents the random life itself, which cannot quite be pinned down or directed regardless of all the people who pretend otherwise. The opening act, where the mother drops off her daughters at the grandmother's house, has clever dialogues (one of the girls narrates: "Lucille would remember one thing, and I another, until we pieced together the whole journey. We tried so hard that we ended up not knowing what we really remembered from what we only imagined."), and in the next sequence the mother is seen sitting on the rooftop of her car, stuck in the mud in the countryside. Three boys show up and help her push the car out of the mud. She gives them her purse, as one of the boys hesitates to take it, not understanding the gesture. The mother then drivess off from the cliff with her car into the sea, to her death. She could not take the randomness of life, but her sister Sylvia can.
The main plot revolving around the two girls, Ruth and Lucille, now as teenagers, being taken care by their aunt Sylvie, is full of little funny, comical moments: Sylvie randomly stands in front of a house to watch the TV program through a window; has quirky lines ("I met a really nice lady at the station. She was traveling all the way through from South Dakota to Portland to see her relative hanged.") and is totally unscathed by a flood in the house, with the water reaching 10 inches, as she prepares breakfast on the table in the kitchen. Forsyth also has some impressive shots, especially the one where the townspeople walk on the frozen lake in the winter, looking at a hole in the middle left after a train fell down from the bridge. The first half of the movie is somehow fascinating and hypnotic, but in the second half it loses itself in too much empty walk and overstretched running time where nothing much happens, and after Lucille leaves the house and only Ruth and Sylvie are left in the last third, the whole movie becomes even more uneventful. The whole second half becomes less funny and less interesting, until the viewers simply lose interest in the overlong running time of two hours that cannot sustain such a light set of scenes. Better editing and more concrete ideas would have improved this second half. Just like the unusual final scene, "Housekeeping" is a peculiar meditation on life without a guideline, yet it has enough good moments to engage.
Grade:++
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