In 2015, Alyssa Hill’s startling Holocaust-themed script made the Black List of best unproduced screenplays. Now, a decade later, it has finally been made, and somehow the timing is just right for this challenging and pertinent portrait of a woman who lived a lie, hiding in plain sight until an intrepid young New York Times journalist uncovered her shocking secret right in the heart of Queens circa 1964, almost 20 years after the horrific events she has kept hidden, even from her husband, in a completely different life in post-war America.
I say the timing is eerily right since antisemitism and wholesale immigration cleansing has made a comeback, unthinkable after the horrors of the Nazis and concentration camps, and even as recently as this week in Germany where a far-right extremist party scored an election victory, the latest sign of a resurgence for the worst aspects of German history.
Enter one of the key opening-night world premieres at the Toronto Film Festival with the debut of the deceptively titled The Housewife. Naomi Watts plays Austrian-born Hermine Ryan, seemingly as a typical Queens, NY, 1950s housewife. She’s happily married to construction worker Russell Ryan (Luke Evans), bakes cakes for her neighbors and is a member of the women’s garden club — generally almost a June Cleaver persona in her community.
NYT reporter Joseph Lelyveld (Tye Sheridan) has been tipped by famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal about a suspected former concentration camp guard living in the suburbs, perhaps under an assumed name. He tracks the suspected man down but first encounters his wife, Hermine, who invites him in, even acting motherly and cooperative to the point where Lelyveld feels the tip is a dead end. The planned front-page story has to be delayed despite the insistence of his anxious editor, Abe (Ron Leo).
Lelyveld worked closely with immigration officer Anthony DeVito (a very fine Michael Imperioli), who makes a startling discovery: It is not the husband, but rather the formerly known Hermine Braunsteiner who was in fact a vicious guard responsible for leading hundreds of Jews to their deaths. Female guards are rarely heard of, much less depicted in movies, making The Housewife a unique entry into the canon of films made on this subject.
The revelation comes relatively early, so it is not a spoiler alert. The story, inspired by real events, proceeds with Lelyveld confronting Hermine who denies all of it, claiming she was never a guard and unaware of the horrors at the camp. It becomes a bit of a cat-and-mouse game, Hermine’s secret life at risk, until the reporter can actually go to print, but does he have the facts needed? Suddenly her past is public record, the effort to deport her begins, and director Ben Shirinian’s impressive debut feature film becomes a psychological drama laced with moral ambiguity.
What The Housewife shows most effectively is human nature, how one person can embody the worst, most monstrous aspects of humanity, and then lock it away (literally in the case of her Nazi medal she quietly prizes but keeps hidden) to become a model American citizen. In an enormously tricky and risky performance, Watts is stunning as she plays both aspects, deep in denial of who she was and unapologetic for the mask she has been wearing, even with her husband who never knew. It is also nice to see Sheridan dive into a different kind of role than we have seen him do in the past, a conflicted but honest reporter confronted with a complex story he could not have imagined. Also, though in for just a couple of scenes, Lena Olin is superb and riveting as Rachel Berger, a reluctant eyewitness to Hermine’s atrocities but a key person who tells the frightening truth at Hermine’s deportation hearing which becomes as nail-biting as any courtroom drama you may have seen.
What works well here, and sets this exceptional film apart from what we have seen many times in dealing with this subject, is that there are no flashbacks to the actual scene of the crimes as it were, not a single shot of Hermine in a camp. The truly frightening thing is seeing her as she lives quietly all these years later, an upstanding citizen with a past finally uncovered that could have remained undiscovered if not for the efforts of Wiesenthal, one dedicated journalist, and the power of a free press.
Producers are Robbie Brenner, Kevin McKeon, Lee Broda, Jonathan Lim and Matt Paul. Appropriate for its TIFF debut, Canadian Shirinian’s film was shot in Montreal doubling effectively for New York.
Title: The Housewife
Festival: Toronto (Opening Night)
Director: Ben Shirinian
Screenwriter: Alyssa Hill
Cast: Naomi Watts, Luke Evans, Tye Sheridan, Lena Olin, Michael Imperioli, Ron Leo
Sales agent: CAA
Running time: 1 hr 42 mins
