Long gone are the days of Sigourney Weaver getting even with Alien. Even three times her live Ellen Ripley and once more her clone more or less fought with one of the most dangerous movie villains, and in this romantic – humorous drama Weaver deals with alcohol. This actress has already passed her seventieth year of life, and in “The Good House” written and directed by the spouses Maya Forbes and Wally Wolodarsky, she is Hildy Good. The once most successful real estate agent in the fictional town of Wendover located in the north of the USA is now in serious trouble.
A few years earlier, her husband left her, both of her daughters have grown up and moved away from her, and although she continues to help them all financially, they forced her to undergo alcohol treatment. While she was in rehab, her former assistant stole all her clients and opened her own agency, and although Hildy likes to drink, she doesn’t think she has a problem with alcohol. All the same, she tries to hide her alcoholic tendency, although it is becoming more and more difficult for her since her drunken escapades are more and more frequent. He experiences blackouts, he doesn’t remember anything when he drinks too much, and it happens quite often. All the same, it really gets on her nerves when someone complains to her, and it especially bothers her when everyone starts treating her in a patronizing way.
For Hildy, we will understand, alcohol is also a kind of escape from problems, an exhaust valve to escape from a life that in the end did not unravel as she planned, and Hildy is also the narrator of the film. Occasionally, she addresses the viewer directly and directs us to the relationships between the locals, and we get an insight into the situation in that sleepy town from her perspective, which is quite distorted by alcohol fumes. And although her work is going very badly, she still tries to give the impression that everything is under control and that she holds the reins of life in her hands, although it is clear that everything is going to hell. But luckily, there is her former love from high school days, Frank (Kevin Kline), with whom she will renew the relationship, and he is the only one who manages to notice that her life is turning into a disaster.
And of course, by the end Hildy will have to fall to the very bottom in order to try to rise again and realize that her enjoyment of alcohol is no longer a joke, as she still thinks, but a serious problem. At the end of “The Good House”, it was quite a solid drama that may deal with a serious problem, but it is nicely broken up with humor. Back in the nineties, Weaver and Kline were partners in several films, and now they, especially Weaver, lead this cute, unobtrusive film premiered at the Toronto festival.