"Housekeeping" (1987) (Ebertfest 2008) - Movie Review

Not a while back, which was yesterday I was happen to view the real story of a farmer John Peterson in the film “The Real Dirt on Farmer John”. In that his hippie culture and the diversified people he made himself friends and associates caused the community to outcast him. Here today in the film “Housekeeping” we see a cheerful free spirit been condemned upon not for unusual acquaintances but being her and in the mean time influencing her way of life to her elder niece.

The film with no particular time setting (even though the styles and costumes mention something of 50’s) is the reminiscence through a voice of girl Ruthy (Sara Walker) and her child hood with her sister Lucille (Andrea Burchill). At a tender age unaware of the rules and structure of society they are been taken by her mother Helen (Margot Pinvidic) to their grandmother’s place in a fictional place called Fingerbone, Idaho. She leaves them there and drowns herself with the car into the lake. They are then brought up by their grandmother and when she dies passed on to the next elderly relatives to come by. Soon they find it hard and call up the girl’s long lost Aunt Sylvie (Christine Lahti). It is the limitless character of Sylvie and how she relates and been related to the girls becomes the “Housekeeping”.

The town is taken in major fashion of its presence over the life style this family goes through. When the girls meet their aunt, they are curious and excited because of a younger face and more importantly a possible history of their mother and father. Sylvie is the person of enormous cherubic energy. And it can take for her to smile and hurry the small things with happiness and cheer that it does not take any one long to love to be around her. She is like a vacation and it feels good but the society has not trained our life to be a vacation nor do we appreciate that as our life. For Sylvie it is and the girls being girls are thrilled by it.

They are not bound by grounding for wrong doing. They vanish amongst the woods and lakes for a week because Lucille does not feel like going to school. But soon the fun is gone because the thrill of escaping and operating clandestine is not present. Sylvie will not question or catch them to punish. In fact Sylvie wanders right beside them and does not even notice them. It is the girls fear seeing Sylvie walk up the train rails on a bridge they call her. And Sylvie being Sylvie innocently questions and beats herself up for thinking school does not leave early. The girls soon understand that cheating her is no fun.

The younger sister Lucille begins to shiver out of this fantasy land created by Sylvie. She is beginning to be embarrassed by her aunt’s action and lifestyle. She loves her sister and wants to mingle with the group and be accepted as any kid would want to. But Ruthy appreciates the life her aunt is leading and walks that path too. As an audience, even though Lucille act are considered heartless at instances, she is being concerned about her sister. Beyond the embarrassment she has created herself; the sociology of belonging in a community acts her to salvage Ruthy.

Ruthy though very much misses her sister and haunted by her acting as an outsider in the same house does not want to be rescued. Soon the sister departs. The part in which the avoidance of that little girl of her aunt and the elder sister is handled with such a brutal reality and tragedy that it reminded me of the conflicts I had with the room mates in my Masters. Living in a foreign land with financial and academic pressure, the house you live in is the last place you want the conflict. And if the ambience of peace and harmony is so much needed with a stranger in a strange land, it is no fault of any one to expect in having it with their family and loved ones.

Directed by Scottish director Bill Forsyth, this is a film about the relationships, society, its impact and the free spirited soul we may be fortunate to encounter. In fact Sylvie too begins to act “normal” due to the fear of losing Ruthy in the end. It is a tragedy with a comedy on the casual behaviour of Sylvie. Christine Lahti’s soulful representation of naïveté in Sylvie is a character that can never be disturbed in her stillness of purity of individuality and happiness in every little thing. And in novel presentation of Bill Forsyth (the story of course is adapted from the novel of the same name by Marilynne Robinson) with the trance serenity of the mountains, lakes and rail roads, we laugh and sympathize with the outcast spirit of Sylvie and Ruthy.