‘Housekeeping’

Scottish filmmaker Bill Forsyth’s 1987 U.S. debut is a lovely, strange little film, and it says a lot of truthful, moving and scary things about small American towns in the ‘50s. Its outcasts are female: two little girls (Sara Walker, Andrea Burchill), left by their mother with relatives. Its outlaw is also a woman: their aunt (Christine Lahti, pictured), who takes over the household after a life spent on the road in hobo camps and on trains. Adapted from Marilynne Robinson’s novel, it is a story about people whose rhythms are different from their neighbors, of spirits who can’t be tamed, the dispossessed of a quietly tyrannical time (KCET Saturday at 9 p.m.).