Off The Cliff HOUSEKEEPING

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

"Never apologize, never explain." That ancient macho motto may be the only bit of traditional wisdom Scottish Filmmaker Bill Forsyth believes in. The glory of his wee pictures (Gregory's Girl, Local Hero) is the way people appear out of nowhere, disappear without warning, and never discuss their motives for doing either. In his world no one has heard of Freud, let alone a well-made screenplay. They are, however, well prepared for life's little surprises.

Take Ruth and Lucille (Sara Walker and Andrea Burchill), the teenagers at the center of this adaptation of Marilynne Robinson's novel. One day in the 1950s their mother carefully deposits them with her hometown relatives in Fingerbone, Idaho. Then, with equal punctiliousness, she pays some boys to give her car a push so that she can sail off a cliff in it. Her suicide is shot in a way that provokes the biggest laugh in Housekeeping, a movie that is not as funny as some Forsyth fans will claim, but sturdy and rich. All the girls' guardians turn out to be too old for the job, so their Aunt Sylvie (Christine Lahti) is summoned home from her wanderings to take up the task.

She is, of course, sweetly, soberly mad. She fills the house with her collections of newspapers and tin cans, carries crackers around in case she runs into a woodland sprite, gets a kick out of it when the house is flooded, and is obviously an unfit stepparent. The outraged townsfolk, with their passion for convention, soon influence Lucille, the younger, staider of the girls. Ruth is made of sterner, that is dreamier, driftier stuff. Like Sylvie. Like Bill Forsyth. Not that he would ever pass judgment on the choices the women ultimately make. Or ask for an explanation. All he proposes is that if you lean in close to some people, you will hear the faint, possibly edifying beat of a different drummer.-- R.S.