Housekeeping for Beginners

critic Reviews

, 93% Certified Fresh Tomatometer Score
  • Applying a fresh coat of paint on a chosen family story, Housekeeping for Beginners makes for a cozy, uplifting watch.
  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Johanna SchnellerGlobe and Mail
    In lesser hands, this chaos might tumble into melodrama or farce. But Stolevski’s actors deliver such naturalistic performances, and he writes such specific dialogue...
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Amy NicholsonWashington Post
    By the end, we’ve soaked up something of modern Macedonia and had our own cultural standards put to the rack.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Randy MyersSan Jose Mercury News
    Stolevski creates a wonderful group of flawed but understandable characters and then illustrates just how brave they are as they pull together to negotiate and overcome treacherous encounters.
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  • , Rotten Tomatometer Score
    G. Allen JohnsonSan Francisco Chronicle
    Stolevski obviously wants us to sympathize with these wounded characters who have been shunted aside by a cruel society, but that’s hard to do when they are so verbally cannibalistic.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Katie WalshTribune News Service
    Within “Housekeeping’s” restless, naturalistic aesthetic, Stolevski crafts complex and poignant images, contrasting the playacting the couple is forced to do with their searing gazes.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Drew GregoryAutostraddle
    Housekeeping for Beginners dabbles in some common tropes: unlikely chosen families, a non-parent being forced to adjust to parenthood, and even a “white savior." But the film is successful because of the ways it complicates them.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    William StottorLoud and Clear Reviews
    In Housekeeping for Beginners, a ramshackle family reel from the loss of one of their members and try to find unity amongst the stifling chaos of grief.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Luke BuckmasterFlicks (AU, NZ, UK)
    Housekeeping for Beginners is Stolevski’s most intimate look at a family or family-like unit, but, for me, it’s his least engaging film by a long shot.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Cris KennedyInner East Review
    Stolevski's screenplay lurches from drama to drama you would expect in a large house filled with a collective thrown together by the social conditions of contemporary Europe.
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  • , Fresh Tomatometer Score
    Andiee PaviourNobody's Reading This But Me
    A shambolic household takes shape as a family in a trial by fire all the sweeter for its transformative heat.
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