‘The Housewife’ Review: Naomi Watts Anchors Watchable but Underpowered True Story

In Ben Shirinian’s debut feature, “The Housewife,” viewers are likely to uncover the dark secret held by immigrant homemaker Hermine Ryan long before authorities do. While this premature revelation stems partly from heavy-handed direction and scripting, it highlights the superior quality of Naomi Watts’ lead performance, which often operates on a level more nuanced than the film surrounding it.

Based on a true story set in mid-1960s New York City, the movie functions primarily as a character study of a woman deceiving both herself and those around her. The procedural thriller framework, however, feels insufficiently developed, with Tye Sheridan’s journalist and Michael Imperioli’s immigration officer serving as weak foils to Watts’ complex protagonist.

Shininian, a Montreal native who filmed the Queens-set drama in his hometown, approaches the ambitious material with visual gravitas. However, he and first-time screenwriter Alyssa Hill tend to emphasize plot points already evident in the script. Despite this, the film’s polished period production design and distinguished cast—including an underutilized Luke Evans and a briefly striking Lena Olin—position it as an upscale drama capable of performing well in arthouse circuits outside the awards season.

Hermine, born Braunsteiner, arrives with a nervous brittleness masked by a permanent smile. Having moved to the United States from post-WWII Austria with her husband Russell, she has lived in New York for nearly a decade yet feels like an outsider due to her strong Germanic accent. As she approaches her citizenship interview, anxiety mounts, though she ultimately charms Anthony DeVito with her earnest recitation of the American Dream.

Her comment that “you can be anyone you want to be” serves as an obvious clue that her background is not what it seems. When New York Times reporter Joseph Lelyveld arrives at her door, she appears surprisingly unfazed. He is acting on a tip from Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, though the film sidelines this famous figure significantly.

The narrative employs labored obfuscation, notably by delaying the introduction of Russell, in an attempt to engineer a twist. Yet, audiences familiar with the real-life case will predict the truth well in advance. Hermine, played with tricky disarming quality by Watts, is so compelling that the story does not rely on strategic reveals.

Sheridan’s character, however, remains a flat information-gathering device, burdened by phonetically expositional dialogue that occasionally insults the audience’s intelligence. A hinted romantic tension between him and Watts goes largely unexplored as the film pivots to a rushed third-act courtroom drama.

Watts’ previously measured character gradations become compressed during the denouement, though Olin shines in two scenes as a Holocaust survivor revealing ugly truths. At 102 minutes, the film moves briskly but lacks breathing room after its coy first hour. Just as the story becomes most riveting through Hermine’s unreliable perspective, it hurries to the finish line. Nevertheless, the film serves as a welcome reminder of Watts’ ability to anchor a role that challenges her adaptable and slightly unknowable screen presence.