Housekeeping

I like Bill Forsyth films and this got good reviews so I decided to watch it. However it is quite slow, and i found it disappointing. It did not hold my attention. The plot and script lacked something. I found it less than credible. If a film is good, I never question credibility - it's not a documentary after all. But when the film is mediocre, then all sorts of things generate questions and make me think, " that would never happen". On a positive note: I thought the start was excellent. I liked that the story was being told by one of the girls. The acting was good. I suppose that it fits the Bill Forsyth criterion of being quirky and different, but it lacks the humour of films like Gregory's Girl and That Sinking Feeling.

great film, but probably the most misrepresentative ad campaign i've ever seen for a movie. this is NOT a comedy. Christine Lahti's Sylvia is NOT a one dimensional free-spirit. she is disturbed, as is the entire family. this translates perfectly from the book, as does the film's look and emotional atmosphere.

as for the opinion that Sylvia is a Pied Piper, that's just wrong. she could care less if anyone follows in her path. it just so happens that her niece is seduced by virtue of what i would interpret as instinct. the family has a long history of breaking from the norm, much to its detriment. the niece is merely fulfilling her filial destiny.

to say that the story presents a polemic about nonconformity shortchanges the viewer from the complexity of emotions that it evokes. there is no argument. this is just the way things turn out for these folks. and in my opinion, the ending leaves us questioning, just as it does in the book, how much control we have over destiny.

I wish this movie were available on DVD!!!

Christine Lahti does her typically superlative job of depicting a woman whose values come from the heart rather than deriving from the dictates of western civilization. As always, she expresses the best of the free spirit which I believe can be found in any one of us.

Two young sisters end up in the custody of their aunt Sylvie, who has spent her life having abandoned the trappings of western civilization in general and of consumerism in particular.

In order to support her young nieces, Sylvie returns from the wild, so to speak, and helps to raise the girls in a manner which allows them to see the freedom of disassociation from society and its dictated "norms".

Two orphaned sisters growing up in a small Northwest mountain town in the 1950s drift apart when the eccentric habits of their itinerant guardian aunt (Christine Lahti) push one to the shelter of social conformity and draw the other outside, to an uncertain but more exciting life apart. The film was sold as another of Bill Forsythe's whimsical comedies, but the humor is overshadowed by the lingering memory of loss and dissatisfaction: a grandfather's tragic death, a mother's lonely suicide, and so forth. Likewise there isn't anything funny about Aunt Sylvie's deeply rooted vagabond instincts (expressed, for once, as something more than merely charming or quaint), which attract the more introverted sister (narrating the details) as strongly as they repel the rest of the community. It's a haunting, almost melancholy film, carefully paced to the rhythms of small town life in hard times, and with a fascinating undercurrent (note the irony of the title) equating the freedom of the open road with the liberation of women from domestic dependency. The final image, after Sylvie has introduced her niece to a life of wanderlust, is enough to lure the hobo out of any viewer.

Years since I saw it in the moviehouse or video. NOT a comedy in the yuk yuk sense. I only wish I could have been on the set to say, "Bill, Focus more on the girls, not the aunt! You did them both so well!" It was just a question of balance in this absorbing movie. Christine Lahti had such a good, strong performance and Forsyth let her take the movie, or at least gave many viewers the idea that her character's the focus. Stunning scenery, wonderful evocation of family and place, and fascinates with its exploration of watery metaphors for our connection to and removal from people. Very faithful in tone to the book (a must-read by marilyn robinson, BTW), which I read after seeing the movie more than once. I wish I could see it on the big screen again.