The Good House

As a film that aims to make an essential and involving film about a woman’s career and struggles with alcoholism, The Good House is dramatically inert and maudlin, a film that hits so many false notes that it has the tone and feel of a made-for-TV movie. A quintessential film that’s constructed to be something more substantial–from the reunion of Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver (see them in Ang Lee’s 1997 masterpiece The Ice Storm and Ivan Reitman’s 1993 sharply satirical Dave) attempting to reach another last grasp at a script and subject matter that has the potential of being something raw and deeply moving to Andrei Bowden Schwartz’s cinematography that shoots the east coast vividly–this is a character study that doesn’t quite reach its authenticity of such a disorder known as alcoholism. Spouse filmmakers Maya Forbes and Wally Wolodarsky adapt the 2013 novel of the same title by Ann Leary into an accessible exploration of alcoholism with an adequate performance from Sigourney Weaver, but the film doesn’t quite deliver the dramatic and emotional impact due to its inconsistent tonal shifts and dull execution of its drama.

In an era where studios now do pre-sales, option scripts, and attempt to produce their own Indiewood films or indie costs with name talent, there is a sincerity to Forbes and Solodarsky’s vision. But The Good House feels watered down to its own shortfall in emotional complexity and has outlines of many elements that should have made for a more absorbing and rawer character study. It’s a narrative that makes a whimpering case for redemption that just never fully accelerates due to its inconsistency and unevenness. If anything, when The Good House aims at being amusing is where it succeeds the most.

Inconsistency, in fact, is launched in the very beginning when middle-aged Hildy Good (Weaver) narrates the film and even breaks the fourth wall. In the beginning, she takes the audience on a journey as if we’re watching a more mature rom-com about a savvy, career-driven woman who holds a lot of insights on being a successful and competitive real estate broker. The film starts off breezy, warm, and inviting until it shifts gears and unsuccessfully becomes a serious drama about alcoholism.

While there is nothing wrong with the exploration of such potent subject matter, Sigourney Weaver attempts to hold the film together as a deeply flawed and unreliable narrative. However, the performance can only take the film so far because it unfortunately takes a more watered-down approach in which many subplots and secondary characters feel more at home in a TV movie-of-the-week than wasting screen space at your local multiplex.

It takes a while for Hildy’s addiction to be explored. We follow her as a determined divorcee who is very determined to reclaim her real estate glory days in her small bayside town of Wendover, Massachusetts. A town that once thrived on being a fishing and harbor industry is now drying out. Many wealthy people are looking to buy out blue-collar people’s homes to build up land for mansions. We learn that Hildy was once the ace realtor in the community, until she had to step away from her career to seek rehab. During her rehabilitation, her competitor, Wendy Heatherton (Kathryn Erbe), took the opportunity to seize all her existing and potential clients. To add even more inconsistencies, Hildy is a descendant of persecuted Salem witches who can read minds and even talk to the dead. It has all the elements of being a compelling film, yet somehow the film fails to dramatically ignite.

After returning from rehab, Hildy gravitated back towards drinking. She’s certainly in denial, and her choice of drink is merlot, which she often drinks alone. She also attends a lot of social gatherings and parties to blend in with other people socially drinking. There are also an unnecessary number of supporting characters in the film that are Hildy’s clients, including Peter (Rob Delaney), a psychiatrist who is in a very unhappy marriage, and Rebecca, a neglected housewife who is also in a very unhappy marriage. During a late night, Hildy notices Peter and Rebecca kissing out on the street. Meanwhile, Rebecca ends up wanting to get out of her marriage and buy a cottage that she wants to turn into an arts studio. Hildy ends up fostering a friendship with Rebecca and they become casual wine drinking buddies as well.

Hidly is also a mother of two daughters, Tess (Rebecca Henderson) and Emily (Molly Brown), to whom Hidly provides money for their personal necessities, but both daughters are very concerned that she will easily slip back into relapse. Of course, Hidly does, as a few glasses of wine turn into a bottle, and she often blacks out after midnight swims during cold nights. She ends up reconnecting with her old high school sweetheart, Frank (Kevin Kline), a jack-of-all-trades home repairman. Kline’s character is more of a supporting character, and the revitalized romance is mostly a subplot. Despite the limited onscreen time together, the onscreen chemistry of Kline and Weaver is the highlight of the film.

It isn’t fair to draw comparisons to other raw films that have explored alcoholism with more honesty and rawness, like Mike Figgis’s Leaving Las Vegas, James Ponsoldt’s Smashed or Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, to name just a few. However, the fact remains that the film is dead-serious in exploring a very fragile topic that hits too many false notes with its cookie-cutter approach and uneven tonal shifts. Filmmakers Forbes and Wolodarsky hint at exploring some volatile humanism here, yet these outside emotions never fully resonate. Conversely, The Good House crumbles from being too compromised. There are serviceable ideas at work here, but The Good House is a noble miss that deteriorates in its avowed withholding in taking the audience into more complex and fragile areas that the subject matter deserves.