The Plot: Running from 1969 to 1995, the Housewife Of The Year competition celebrated the role of Irish women in the home. They were tested on cooking skills, nurturing and basic household management skills. The winner won a princely sum of £300 and a new cooker, along with media attention. From 1982 it went out to a bigger audience on RTE, hosted by Gay Byrne. As Bob Dylan once sang, The Times They Are A-Changin’ though and it eventually fell out of fashion as gender roles became less defined. As a number of winners and participants look back on it now through the haze of the past, they wonder why they went along with it but also embraced it as a showcase for women in Irish society…
The Verdict: ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’, wrote L.P. Hartley in The Go-Between. That might sound like a timeframe of centuries ago, but when it comes to Housewife Of The Year it’s not so long ago at all – ask your parents or grandparents and they probably know all about it. This rather charming documentary charts the Irish competition of the title which ran for several decades, perhaps most prominently in the 1980s when gender roles were clearly defined as per the Constitution – women belonged in the home cooking and childminding, while men went out to work for a living. It was just the accepted belief and way of things, reinforced by the ever-present role of the Catholic Church and religious doctrine. Unlike a certain Cillian Murphy film that came out recently, this film paints a more positive view of the recent Irish past that is quaint but not unlikeable. There’s something to be celebrated here.
Director Ciaran Cassidy’s previous documentary Jihad Jane was serious stuff, so it’s interesting to watch him switch gears for his second feature. There’s more than a touch of Ken Wardrop’s style of documentary filmmaking here, utilising real people from many different backgrounds, choice archival footage and that self-deprecating Irish sense of humour just bubbling amiably away and occasionally coming to the surface. The rest is Cassidy though and his instincts in finding his way through this story in a balanced and considerate way is commendable. In an early form, it was going to be a 52-minute special for RTE. Cassidy ultimately rejected that idea in favour of a feature that could have the breathing space to tell the stories of the winners and participants in more detail and why they took part like headless chickens, as one of them remarked. He was right about that.
The archive footage of the show itself is fun to watch, as the contestants engage in banter with Byrne, talk about their homemaking skills, sing a song and engage in a dash of poetry too. The lovely ladies competition then, giving the Rose Of Tralee a run for its similarly outdated money. The footage alone wouldn’t be enough here though. It’s the stories of the women involved that are genuinely affecting and raise the film up to where it needs to be, relating it to a modern audience’s perspective. With no contraception at the time, one lady had 11 children to look after and that was what she devoted her life to – a noble pursuit. Another lady worried about being a single mother and how the media might perceive that. The common thread that runs through all their stories though is that they enjoyed the platform that the show gave them, even if it reinforced gender stereotypes at a time when Irish society was heading towards great societal change including thorny topics like divorce.
Housewife Of The Year is neither a rose-tinted view of the past nor a sly condemnation of it. It’s to Cassidy’s credit that the film is remarkably balanced in the edit, taking modern disbelief and then gently massaging it to win the audience over with the stories of these ordinary but still super women in their own particular way. It’s quite a disarming film then, funny but poignant in equal measures and a real winner too. If there’s one documentary to see this month, then this is it. Applause for all concerned.
Rating: 4 / 5
Review by Gareth O’Connor
In short: A real winner
Directed by Ciaran Cassidy.