The Housewife Review: Naomi Watts Is Superb in an Initially Riveting, Increasingly Generic Portrait of Deceptive 1960s American Domesticity

Arriving at a time when accountability would appear to be an increasingly scarce commodity, The Housewife, which was handed its world premiere on the opening night of the Toronto International Film Festival, shares a lot with last year’s fest entry, Nuremberg, with its themes of complicity and the thorny pursuit of justice.

Set in New York two decades after the end of the Second World War, the first feature by Canadian filmmaker Ben Shirinian with a compelling script by Alyssa Hill, follows a New York Times reporter’s investigation of a war criminal believed to be living a “simple life” in Queens.

Acting on a lead from famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, journalist Joseph Lelyveld (Tye Sheridan) turns up at the immaculate home of Russell Ryan (Luke Evans), where he’s greeted hospitably by his Austrian wife, Hermine (Naomi Watts, whose performance is as expertly measured as her wardrobe). Having just aced her U.S. citizenship interview with immigration agent Anthony DeVito (Michael Imperioli), Hermine makes for the model ’60s American homemaker, whether baking oatmeal raisin cookies for church events, tending to a sick neighbor (Debi Mazar), or insisting on mending a loose button on Lelyveld’s jacket sleeve. In his conversations with Hermine, Joseph suspects that she may not be aware of her husband’s purported past, but it is soon revealed that Russell’s past (actually that of a Long Island construction worker) is not the one that should concern him.

It turns out that Mrs. Ryan is actually Hermine Braunsteiner, a concentration camp guard who married Ryan five years earlier and set up house in America, “where you can be anyone you want to be.” By the time Joseph makes that realization, he’s already conflicted by those earlier protective feelings he had for her. But he nevertheless publishes the piece that will lead to her extradition to West Germany, where she would ultimately face trial and be convicted for complicity in the murders of over 1,000 people.

But his story doesn’t exactly make for a done deal, with the U.S. government apparently in no hurry to open a review that would shine a spotlight on its inability to keep the bad guys out of the country.

For the most part, the heart of Shirinian’s feature debut is less concerned with those hard facts than it is with what he calls “our moral blinders which often begin with familiarity,” and it makes for a more evocative approach to Alyssa Hill’s script, which was on the 2016 Black List.

Period detail is neatly provided by vintage TV commercials, Jean-Andre Carriere’s nostalgic production design and costume designer Anette Cseri’s interior mood-keyed frocks, which call to mind Edith Head’s Hitchcock collaborations for Vertigo and The Birds.

The Housewife is certainly at its most potent during those earlier sequences, when Sheridan’s Lelyveld is under the mistaken impression that Hermine Ryan is the unwitting victim rather than the unrepentant perpetrator. The simmering push-pull dynamic in their encounters proves beguiling. Once Hermine’s carefully manicured facade is lifted, the drama settles into less intriguing territory, especially during the more generic extradition hearings. The notable exception is the always effective Lena Olin, whose brief turn as a concentration camp survivor attesting to Hermine’s true sadistic nature packs a quiet charge.

But the film’s biggest asset is, obviously, Watts, who fearlessly digs deep and comes up with some of the best work of her career. Lurking just beneath that keenly studied veneer of the quintessential 60s American homemaker informed by Betty Crocker and Miss Clairol is a remorseless dark soul and barely concealed rage. While there are a few times the script requires her character to flirt with something just short of melodrama, she admirably remains firmly rooted in her painstakingly orchestrated surroundings.