Housekeeping for Beginners
Focus Features | Release Date: April 5, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
80
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 13 Critic Reviews
Positive:
11
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Los Angeles TimesKatie WalshApr 4, 2024
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. Read full review
100
Screen DailyWendy IdeApr 4, 2024
Stolevski’s handling of the balance between jostling high spirits and the creeping dread of loss is supremely confident; his storytelling is fresh, authentic and genuinely exciting. Read full review
90
VarietyGuy LodgeApr 4, 2024
Stolevski’s lively, garrulous script may be plot-heavy, but the film isn’t propelled as much by grand narrative turns as it is by the powderkeg reactivity of its characters. Each scrap and squabble and occasional flash of understanding between them activates the film anew, so no interpersonal dynamic here ever feels comfortably settled. Read full review
90
The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisApr 4, 2024
In its cheerfully disordered way, “Housekeeping” tells us that families, like last-minute meals, must sometimes be created from whatever ingredients are at hand. Read full review
88
The Associated PressMark KennedyApr 3, 2024
Writer and director Goran Stolevski gives us an atypical family portrait that’s brilliantly political without being preachy, loving without being maudlin and epic by being specifically tiny. Read full review
80
The GuardianMichael SunMay 9, 2024
Stolevski’s film-making is deft. He weaves a social consciousness into his narrative without retreating to mawkish parables of resistance and redemption. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinApr 4, 2024
Writer-director Goran Stolevski’s Housekeeping for Beginners (Domakinstvo za pocetnici) is a fizzy, huggable portrait of a self-made, roughly blended queer family. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Johanna SchnellerApr 12, 2024
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 . . . that you care deeply about what happens to these people. Read full review
70
ColliderTaylor GatesApr 4, 2024
The film manages to capture the specific way queer communities communicate with one another and the unique chemistry between them in a way few others have. Read full review
70
Rolling StoneDavid FearApr 3, 2024
Housekeeping for Beginners will not tell you much about keeping order amidst domestic chaos, per se. It is a primer, however, for turning a house into a home. Read full review
63
Washington PostAmy NicholsonApr 11, 2024
It’s hard to fault Goran Stolevski’s “Housekeeping for Beginners” for being chaotic and miserable. That’s the mood he’s after — and he captures it with such assurance that the film is a tough watch. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonApr 8, 2024
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. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineKyle TurnerApr 2, 2024
In spite of the too-muchness of their performances, the actors wrestle for expressiveness and subtlety against the script’s more obvious and schematic telegraphing of not-quite-nuclear discontent and, ultimately, reconciliation. Read full review
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