Review Household for Beginners: a luminous tribute to the found family | ScreenHub Australia

‘Woman! No dirty words!’

So says Mia (Dzada Selim), the little emperor of a strangely beloved household, held tightly in a cinema verité hug in Of An Era director Goran Stolevski’s luminous tribute to found family, Housekeeping for beginners.

The youngest daughter of Suada (a powerful turn from Alina Serban) and the little, if not presence, sister of Vanessa (Mia Mustafa, one to watch). She is a Ferris wheel with anarchist vibrant energy and does not stand for blunt insults at the dinner table. Unfortunately, because of Mia’s sweet, yet open-hearted sensitivity, the filthy words fly with gleeful abandon in this bittersweet ode to a broader understanding of love.

With an atmosphere of Armistead Maupin’s Barbary Lane in the Stories of the city In this bursting-at-the-seams suburban house in Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia – Stolevski’s native Melbourne – there are countless novels.

In addition to the Roma family, as described above, we also meet Dita, played by Anamaria Marinca, the ‘wolf-eater’ from Stolevski’s hypnotic folk horror. You won’t be alone. She is technically Suada’s social worker, but professional boundaries have been blurred, she has happily crossed cases by bringing her into her home. Then there’s Toni (Vladimir Tintor), Dita’s permanently stubbly and disturbed best friend, a taciturn man of few words and even fewer smiles whose latest Grindr conquest has left 19-year-old Roma man Ali (the bubbly Samson Selim) purposefully forgotten. to leave.

Read: Interview with Goran Stolevski: ‘I am intensely connected to the characters’

A flashpoint in the opening scene, neither an icy disapproving Dita nor a ready-made Suada are impressed that Toni has left him in charge of Mia and Vanessa, leaving Death staring squarely at him. But just when it looks like Dita is about to kick him out if she doesn’t follow through on her threat to call the police, she sees his shaking hands, his nails painted a glittering pink by Mia. As she clasps them in hers, the unspoken grace of this tender moment signals that he has nowhere else to go, and that she will not see him homeless.

Now that Ali has left the winding streets of the Roma community of Shutka on the outskirts of the city for unclear reasons, it is a credit to Stolevski’s deft screenplay that the films never dump information, but merely distribute what we need in naturalistic dialogue , combined with his remarkable gift for eliciting similarly lived-in performances across three feature films in quick succession.

Ali is lost in the surfeit of curse dinners alongside a fantastic chorus of snarls in Sara Klimoska’s Elena, Rozafa Celaj’s Teuta and Ajshe Useini’s Flora, each excelling in smaller roles in a lavishly generous love-sharing film, expertly edited by Stolevski himself.

Before long, you’ll want to move in too and throw yourself into the glorious tune of Balkan pop bangers that this fortunately chosen family occasionally shouts along to.

Housekeeping for beginners is one full house

For all the fun on display in this magnificent Queer Lion Award winner from the Venice Film Festival, which had its Australian premiere at the Adelaide Film Festival, there is a creeping sense of unease beneath the boisterous surface.

An early hospital scene confronts Dita and Suada with the harsh reality of a disturbing medical diagnosis in the face of the over-talking football doctor’s casually mocking anti-Roma bigotry. If Suada is strong enough to suck this up, her jerk shield drops in spectacular fashion when he directs his disdain at a Roma woman who barges into his office seeking help, leading to a dramatic rearrangement of his desktop.

Read: Of An Age film is a tender and romantic Melburnian treat

Dita is not exactly happy that they now need a new doctor and cannot stop herself from scrolling through Google for health advice at the dining table, until Suada throws her laptop over the balcony. Dita’s dreams that her traditional Kosovar tea concoctions – alternately described as tasting like pork balls and an ashtray – will save the day soon turn to what happens when Suada checks out.

Dita resists this worst-case reality and is nevertheless aware that a B-plan is necessary in a country where LGBTQIA+ relationships are not legally recognized and the community faces open hostility, just like Roma children.

In the shadow of death, life continues to teem in this close-knit house, lit by the gifted cinematographer Naum Doksevski as if it were just another resident in this hectic house.

Read: Poor Things review: a fantastic feminist odyssey

Vanessa’s burgeoning sexuality, fraught with cranky teenage rebelliousness, will lead to awkward fistfights via Chekhov’s iPhone case and the threat of a thread falling apart (look for a hilarious cameo of sorts from Stolevski).

Ali increasingly takes on a playful fatherly energy with Mia (they’re real-life father and daughter, and they glow on screen together), while Toni can’t quite wrap his head around settling down with the younger man, while also being pushed and prodded. questionably assume legal custody of Vanessa and Mia.

It’s a hot mess in the very best way, and when it all eventually leads to an unlikely union, Ali’s assurance to Mia that the love between a gay man and his lesbian best friend just might be the strongest, most lasting love in the world can be. everything is a shining ray in a film full of refracted light, spun into a rainbow.

Housekeeping for beginners screened as part of the 2023 Adelaide Film Festival and this review was originally published on October 23, 2023. The releases in Australian cinemas May 9, 2024.