Housekeeping

Uneventful 1950s kinda coming-of-age film where no lessons are learned. Starts off seeming like it has a plot and intentions for its characters, but then just lets them drift, rot, fester, get overgrown. The style of the performances - perhaps harking back to a more innocent time - comes across as a bit too forcefully melodramatic and stylised - it's somewhat charmless. It has its wild locations and moody atmosphere, but that ain't really enough.

So much sleight of hand, so much careful building, that when the last parts arrive and the characters voice their desires, its heartbreaking and so so beautiful

Very nicely shot, intricate and quite freewheeling without being odd, although I'm not sure it succeeds in what it aims for. I hesitantly recommend it for its craftsmanship and sapient dialogue, but the truth is I couldn't relate to any of the characters at all. The girls and their aunt are just opaque, and I couldn't really suss out what drives them, what they're running from or what they want from life, if anything. That they're apparently dissociated isn't enough to go on.

A great trio of performances are the highlight to this slice-of-life tale about growing up in an odd corner of the Pacific Northwest in the 1950s. Nothing mesmerizing happens, but the film crescendos into something quite poignant.

I'm not sure what to make of this film. It's not bad but it's pretty unassuming. It's almost like a television movie. There's minor character growth in the girls but without a satisfying ending, a refreshing aunt character who tells various townspeople off, tragedy after tragedy for the girls, nostalgia (though it's in a small town so not much has changed), and a beautiful landscape. Things got a lot less interesting once the girls were in high school. Fav scene: the flood sucked for them.

A mysterious, subtly enchanted film. The story is presented straightforwardly, and yet it remains almost inaccessibly cryptic. Not much to say for now, but I would hope to see this again further down the line.

forgive me a pair of shaky comps, but firstly it's sort of like an even better john sayles movie? secondly, and this may be the first time in history anyone's made this comparison, i got CLOSE ENCOUNTERS vibes (without such easily parsed allegorical baggage, of course)... something in the way the rest of the family slips away into irrelevance as we look instead for the aliens in the sky or the children in the woods, before finally choosing to live (or sleep so hard you die) among them.

Succeeds in being a movie about an eccentric character without being quirky for quirkiness sake. Instead realisticly depictis a peculiar character, whose behavior isn't so much amusingly strange but underlined with a sadness and chosen detachment from society. Which make it not shy away from the darkness and inherent risks underlying this aloofness. This well rounded portrayal is also thanks to some great acting by CL. It's a lovely depiction of non-conformity in a morally imposing environment.

Lahti is quite brilliant as the kooky aunt.