FILM

USA 2011  104 mins Dir: Mike Mills Starring: Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, Melanie Laurent, Goran Visnjic

Mike Mills has said that he loathes terms like 'quirky' and 'indie' being applied to his films. Perhaps he should have thought about that before making his definitively indie-quirky debut, 'Thumbsucker': a drama about a sensitive, dysfunctional 17-year-old suburban wuss, soundtracked by suicidal singer-songwriter Elliot Smith. Six years on, this semi-autobiographical follow-up seems much more promising, being the story of Oliver (McGregor), whose recently widowed, 75-year-old father Hal (Plummer) announces that he's gay. What's more, Hal insists that he has no intention of being merely "theoretically gay"; he plans to indulge his belatedly acknowledged homosexuality to the full.

Plummer is on vintage form as the spry, newly light-in-the-loafers twilight years clubber who acquires a devoted young lover (Visnjic) looking for a father figure and conceals from him the fact that he has terminal lung cancer. Had this been the focus of 'Beginners', as the advance publicity implied, the film might have been more enjoyable than it is. Instead, Mills proceeds to get – you guessed it! – indie-quirky on our asses with a non-linear narrative and a painfully cute relationship developing between glum graphic artist Oliver and French actress Anna (Laurent), who do such achingly indie-quirky things as roller-skating down hotel corridors with Hal's talking Jack Russell (he speaks in subtitles, obviously). They also have pals who indulge in spray painting cod-meaningful indie-quirky graffiti like 'YOU MAKE ME LAUGH BUT ITS NOT FUNNY' (their punctuation). To be fair, anyone who made it through '(500) Days of Summer' without feeling slightly queasy may find themselves beguiled; everyone else will probably yearn for more of Hal's lust for the life that is ebbing away from him. (Robin Askew)

Website http://focusfeatures.com/beginners

Now showing

Copyright Robin Askew 2011