Hoping to impress his girlfriend Becky, Boston architect Newton Davis designs and builds a new house for himself in his home town. He takes Becky to see it and proposes marriage to her. Becky's response is not what he was hoping for. She not only turns down his marriage proposal but also ends their relationship.
A few months later, Newton meets an attractive waitress named Gwen, seduces her and then abandons her after a one-night stand. That, however, is not the end of the matter. Gwen knows about the house Newton built for Becky, currently standing empty, and decides to move in. She starts furnishing it, explaining to everyone, including Becky and his parents, that she is Newton's new wife. When Newton turns up, he is naturally shocked to discover Gwen living in his house and pretending to be his wife, but he agrees to go along with her deception, hoping to win Becky back by arousing her jealousy. The plan is that he and Gwen will pretend to be married, then pretend to quarrel and get divorced, leaving him free to get back together with Becky. The plan works; Becky begins to take a renewed interest in Newton now that she believes him to be a married man. A complication arises when Gwen and Newton fall for one another.
This is not, of course, a plausible scenario. Those who condemn the film because of its lack of realism are, however, missing the point. "Housesitter" is not meant to be a work of social realism, but a screwball romantic comedy, a genre which has always allowed film-makers a certain freedom to depart from strict verisimilitude. What matters is not whether the scenario is one that would be likely to occur in real life but whether the actors can persuade us to believe in it. And that is precisely what Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn, both very experienced in romantic comedy, manage to do.
Hawn is particularly effective in this film. Looked at objectively, Gwen ("the Ernest Hemingway of bullsh*t") is a quite appalling character, a compulsive liar who from the beginning of the film to its very end appears to live in a fantasy world. When we first meet her, she is pretending to be Hungarian (actually, she is from Toledo, Ohio). With the last line of the film, she tells Newton that her real name is not Gwen but Jessica. (To avoid confusion I will refer to her as Gwen throughout). At one point Newton ends up punching a totally innocent stranger because of a false story Gwen has told about him. Hawn, however, manages to make her curiously likable, another incarnation of the zany, eccentric but lovable and sexy girl she has played in numerous films going back to "Cactus Flower" in the late sixties. (Remarkably, she was in her late forties when she made "Housesitter", but still looked youthful and attractive enough to get away with playing a role like this).
There is, however, more to "Housesitter" than another kooky Goldie Hawn blonde. The film raises some surprisingly deep issues about the nature of reality and the ethics of truth and lies. Gwen's motive for pretending to be Mrs Newton Davis goes deeper than a wish to live rent-free in a big house for several months. She is in search of a life for herself. We learn that she is illegitimate and from a poor background, that she has never known her father and that she has worked in a series of dead-end jobs. Given that Newton's home town is the sort of picture-postcard New England village, complete with church, village green and weatherboarded houses, where it always seems to be a beautiful autumn day, it is hardly surprising that this is the sort of lifestyle she covets. Moreover, she sees in her supposed "in-laws", George and Edna, the parents she never had. Although they have had their differences with their son in the past, they are basically kindly and decent people.
Gwen is not the only person desperate to find a new life. Confronted with the need to produce her parents (about whom she has told a long string of falsehoods), Gwen turns as a last resort to Ralph and Mary, a pair of down-and-outs she knows from her days as a waitress. At first they are reluctant to impersonate Gwen's parents, but quickly grow into their roles, Ralph doing it so well that he even convinces Newton's autocratic boss Moseby that the two of them fought in the same unit in the Pacific.
Newton too is in search of a new start in life. Although Gwen initially sees him as a typical urban professional ("you're so average") she comes to realise that he is, at heart, a dreamer, a man yearning for something that goes beyond his daily routine. He dares, for example, to tell Moseby that their practice should try designing more imaginative buildings rather than repeating the same formula every time. Gwen finds that an attractive quality, whereas the more prosaic Becky rejected him for precisely that reason; she lacked the courage to marry a dreamer.
As the film progresses, the lies told by Gwen and Newton become ever more complex, until it seems that they have created a vast, baroque structure of untruths that feels like it is about to come crashing to the ground at any minute. Yet the film does not take a strictly moralistic position about truth and falsehood. There is a happy ending for the two liars, whereas the more truthful Becky is left out in the cold, a victim of her own lack of moral courage. There is no absolute difference between a liar, a fantasist and a dreamer. As Newton says "Half the things we tell ourselves are fiction". That may be an unusual moral position for a film to take, but it helps to lift "Housesitter" above the average rom-com. 7/10
A few months later, Newton meets an attractive waitress named Gwen, seduces her and then abandons her after a one-night stand. That, however, is not the end of the matter. Gwen knows about the house Newton built for Becky, currently standing empty, and decides to move in. She starts furnishing it, explaining to everyone, including Becky and his parents, that she is Newton's new wife. When Newton turns up, he is naturally shocked to discover Gwen living in his house and pretending to be his wife, but he agrees to go along with her deception, hoping to win Becky back by arousing her jealousy. The plan is that he and Gwen will pretend to be married, then pretend to quarrel and get divorced, leaving him free to get back together with Becky. The plan works; Becky begins to take a renewed interest in Newton now that she believes him to be a married man. A complication arises when Gwen and Newton fall for one another.
This is not, of course, a plausible scenario. Those who condemn the film because of its lack of realism are, however, missing the point. "Housesitter" is not meant to be a work of social realism, but a screwball romantic comedy, a genre which has always allowed film-makers a certain freedom to depart from strict verisimilitude. What matters is not whether the scenario is one that would be likely to occur in real life but whether the actors can persuade us to believe in it. And that is precisely what Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn, both very experienced in romantic comedy, manage to do.
Hawn is particularly effective in this film. Looked at objectively, Gwen ("the Ernest Hemingway of bullsh*t") is a quite appalling character, a compulsive liar who from the beginning of the film to its very end appears to live in a fantasy world. When we first meet her, she is pretending to be Hungarian (actually, she is from Toledo, Ohio). With the last line of the film, she tells Newton that her real name is not Gwen but Jessica. (To avoid confusion I will refer to her as Gwen throughout). At one point Newton ends up punching a totally innocent stranger because of a false story Gwen has told about him. Hawn, however, manages to make her curiously likable, another incarnation of the zany, eccentric but lovable and sexy girl she has played in numerous films going back to "Cactus Flower" in the late sixties. (Remarkably, she was in her late forties when she made "Housesitter", but still looked youthful and attractive enough to get away with playing a role like this).
There is, however, more to "Housesitter" than another kooky Goldie Hawn blonde. The film raises some surprisingly deep issues about the nature of reality and the ethics of truth and lies. Gwen's motive for pretending to be Mrs Newton Davis goes deeper than a wish to live rent-free in a big house for several months. She is in search of a life for herself. We learn that she is illegitimate and from a poor background, that she has never known her father and that she has worked in a series of dead-end jobs. Given that Newton's home town is the sort of picture-postcard New England village, complete with church, village green and weatherboarded houses, where it always seems to be a beautiful autumn day, it is hardly surprising that this is the sort of lifestyle she covets. Moreover, she sees in her supposed "in-laws", George and Edna, the parents she never had. Although they have had their differences with their son in the past, they are basically kindly and decent people.
Gwen is not the only person desperate to find a new life. Confronted with the need to produce her parents (about whom she has told a long string of falsehoods), Gwen turns as a last resort to Ralph and Mary, a pair of down-and-outs she knows from her days as a waitress. At first they are reluctant to impersonate Gwen's parents, but quickly grow into their roles, Ralph doing it so well that he even convinces Newton's autocratic boss Moseby that the two of them fought in the same unit in the Pacific.
Newton too is in search of a new start in life. Although Gwen initially sees him as a typical urban professional ("you're so average") she comes to realise that he is, at heart, a dreamer, a man yearning for something that goes beyond his daily routine. He dares, for example, to tell Moseby that their practice should try designing more imaginative buildings rather than repeating the same formula every time. Gwen finds that an attractive quality, whereas the more prosaic Becky rejected him for precisely that reason; she lacked the courage to marry a dreamer.
As the film progresses, the lies told by Gwen and Newton become ever more complex, until it seems that they have created a vast, baroque structure of untruths that feels like it is about to come crashing to the ground at any minute. Yet the film does not take a strictly moralistic position about truth and falsehood. There is a happy ending for the two liars, whereas the more truthful Becky is left out in the cold, a victim of her own lack of moral courage. There is no absolute difference between a liar, a fantasist and a dreamer. As Newton says "Half the things we tell ourselves are fiction". That may be an unusual moral position for a film to take, but it helps to lift "Housesitter" above the average rom-com. 7/10
