Very well executed

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Blistering performances.

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.

A work of Great Genius, this coming of age film is beautiful, haunting, darkly comic. I love Local Hero but I think this is Bill Forsyth's masterpiece so far. It is about conformity, parenting, coming of age, making choices, madness, creativity, adulthood, tragedies that every family endures, riding on trains, family traits and how they are passed down,living in a small town, life, death, boy scouts doing their good deed for the day, the many uses of newsprint ... the list goes on and on. In short, it is about everything and works at many levels, as a Great Film should. And this is a Truly Great Film, high on my top ten list of favorite films of all time. It is perfectly written, directed and filmed by Bill Forsyth of Scotland, and it includes a great performance by Christine Lahti and also by the supporting cast (esp. those who play her nieces). There is not a bad note in this film, it is a perfect film in every way, to my eye.I understand why some commentators give this film a low rating -- they came looking for a comedy, or for the light melancholia of Local Hero (also a wonderful movie and one of my favorites). Housekeeping is dark melancholia, but it is also deeper and richer of a brew -- kind of Bergman with a sense of humor, in its vibe (though not its plot) it reminds me of another coming of age film, To Kill a Mockingbird, and it is of that film's high caliber.This film is woefully under-appreciated in the U.S., I hope it is released on DVD soon. It deserves another chance to be recognized for what it is -- one of the greatest films of a generation. And I so hope that Bill Forsyth, still relatively young in his early sixties, gets back to writing and directing. His films are wonderful but too few. I really want to -- NEED to -- hear more from Mr. Forsyth, I feel his absence deeply, it is as if Yo-Yo Ma or Heifitz put away their fiddles after a few great concerts, and played no more. Please come back, Mr. Forsyth!

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".

"Housekeeping" is one of the best books i've ever read, and this movie gets it absolutely perfect. Christine Lahti is brilliant; I can't imagine another actress in the role. It seems that nobody has heard of this movie, (understandable, I guess, as it's very low-key, hardly the slick product Hollywood usually churns out) but if you're in the mood for an intelligent, incisive examination of human behavior then you could do no better than to rent this.One other thing. although the box calls it "a tidy comedy", it's far from that. it's a great DRAMA, and my guess is its relative obscurity , and lack of box office success, is more the result of the studios inability to market it than anything.