"We should be doing other things; we're just hiding up here."
Scottish writer/director Bill Forsyth's Housekeeping is a sumptuously atmospheric coming-of-age hangout film that from what I recall matches the tone of the Marilynne Robinson source novel pretty well. In fairness, though, it's been so long since I read it (at the recommendation of my favorite college professor) that I'd mostly forgotten what to expect—with only the most indelible passages giving me a sense of déjà vu.
Housekeeping traces the precarious lives of Lucille and Ruth (from whose perspective the story is told), two directionless girls stuck in a buttoned-down Idaho town, grasping for stability and identity after their disturbed mother pulls a half-Walkabout—that is to say, ferries a pair…