The Good House follows Hildy Good (Sigourney Weaver), a wry New England realtor and descendant of the Salem witches, who loves her wine and her secrets. Her compartmentalized life begins to unravel as she rekindles a romance with her old high-school flame, Frank Getchell (Kevin Kline), and becomes dangerously entwined in one person’s reckless behavior. Igniting long-buried emotions and family secrets, Hildy is propelled toward a reckoning with the one person she’s been avoiding for decades: herself.
Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline play ex-flames who rekindle their romance, in this drama from directors Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky. “I need a good year.” When Hildy (Sigourney Weaver) makes that pronouncement, she’s talking about her sales prospects as a realtor. But there’s also an unspoken acknowledgement that her best years just might be behind her. Bold, brash, and practiced in the ways of her affluent New England town, Hildy’s barely controlled chaos is a bit too familiar to her friends and family. So is its fuel: booze.
Veteran screenwriters Maya Forbes (who also directed Infinitely Polar Bear) and Wallace Wolodarsky adapt and direct Ann Leary’s novel as a piercing observation of a woman capable of great charm, but always ready to sabotage her own success when the mood descends. Seeing the risk escalate, her family stages an intervention. It goes about as well as expected.
The Good House is a 2021 American comedy-drama film directed by Maya Forbes and Wally Wolodarsky, who wrote the screenplay with Thomas Bezucha. It is based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Ann Leary. It stars Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Kline, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Beverly D’Angelo, David Rasche, Rebecca Henderson, Molly Brown, Kelly AuCoin, Kathryn Erbe and Wally Wolodarsky.
The film had its world premiere at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival in September 2021. Originally, Universal Pictures was set to distribute in the United States and some other international territories, but the film’s U.S. rights were later said to be on sale. In June 2022, days before the film’s premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 18, Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions acquired North American rights to the film. Following the film’s premiere at Tribeca, it was released on September 30 the same year.
Film Review for The Good House
A curiously timeless picture which leans utterly into its lead actor, Sigourney Weaver, The Good House is old-fashioned film-making about an ageing professional woman – mother and grandmother – trying and failing to make her peace with the world. With a striking performance by Weaver in the central role of a waspy realtor who is far too dependent on booze to fuel her chaotic personal life and business, Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky’s film – adapted by them and Thomas Bezucha from a novel by Ann Leary – has a sedate cadence, allowing the performer her space to shine. And for many older-skewing audiences, drawn by Weaver’s pairing with the stalwart Kevin Kline, it will be about time.
Beneath its calm surface, The Good House can be as entertainingly prickly as Hildy (Weaver) herself. Breaking the fourth wall, Hildy haughtily pieces together her own story, set in the wealthy New England town of Wendover, her family’s home for almost three centuries. She introduces the characters in her life.
Her ex-husband Scott, who left her for a man and to whom she still pays alimony; her two daughters and grandchild; her former business partner turned rival; and her ex-flame Frank (Kline), a self-made man who turned his profits in waste. Competition is stiff to sell the picturesque town’s mega-properties, and Hildy is very much in the game and under considerable financial stress. “I just need a good year,” she sighs. Or later, during an intervention: “If we’re really going to do this, I need a drink.”
Weaver takes all of Hildy’s sharp, funny and cynical edges and moulds them into a sympathetic person who may be the smartest in the room but is her own worst enemy nonetheless. Forbes and Wolodarsky (The Polka King) start their film by almost sympathising with Hildy’s fondness for a relaxing drink after work – even sharing her sense of outrage at her family’s intervention.
Aren’t they being unreasonable, uptight? She only drinks wine, and she has a lot to deal with, after all – so many demands on her time and patience. It’s only incrementally that we see the extent of Hildy’s upmarket alcoholism. She’s supposed to have stopped drinking, but she sneaks hidden bottles up from an outhouse and, as she lives alone, nobody is the wiser.
As one secret drink turns to three — which Hildy admits is her starting point – she starts to veer alarmingly off track. Complicating matters, although depicted in a restrained, off-hand way, is a secret affair between a neighbour (Morena Baccarin) to whom she recently sold a house and Hildy’s old friend and potential client Peter (Rob Delaney). Loose-lipped and by now suffering from blackouts, Hildy becomes entangled in their web of deceit. Her only ally seems to be Frank (a grizzled Kline), and she’s even stretching his patience beyond its mild-mannered limits.
The film never talks down to Hildy, or portrays her as a tragic, pitiable figure even if her actions are increasingly self-sabotaging and unsympathetic. As a viewing experience, The Good House is capable if unexciting, as tastefully waspish as its millieu, with a damped-down pace and a muted score. As an acting masterclass from Sigourney Weaver as a smart woman in denial, though, it’s impressive.
She brings the pace, the humour, the danger and the pathos to The Good House, and much of its intelligence. Whether that’s enough to see this almost retro film – a sales title at Toronto – break out remains to be seen, but Weaver deserves plaudits for her performance before she goes on to action spectacular Avatar. 2. Like Hildy in a professional crisis, she raises the game.
The Good House (2022)
Directed by: Maya Forbes, Wally Wolodarsky
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Kline, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Beverly D’Angelo, David Rasche, Rebecca Henderson, Molly Brown, Kelly AuCoin, Kathryn Erbe, Wally Wolodarsky
Screenplay by: Thomas Bezucha, Maya Forbes, Wally Wolodarsky
Production Design by: Carl Sprague
Cinematography by: Andrei Bowden Schwartz
Film Editing by: Catherine Haight
Costume Design by: Matthew Pachtman
Art Direction by: Jennifer Stewart
Music by: Theodore Shapiro
MPAA Rating: R for brief sexuality and language.
Distributed by: Lionsgate Films, Roadside Attractions
Release Date: September 30, 2022 (United States)
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