Beginners

Bea says: A sad film. Touted as a fun-loving flick about a young man's dad coming out at an advanced age, it is actually about death, loss and grief, and in fact is a good exploration of these themes - but it is, nevertheless, a sad film to watch. This might be because I have watched Cecil experience many of the events of the film, and have some experience with them myself, and I suspect that most audiences will contain significant numbers of people who can directly relate to the loss of one or both parents.

The plot follows Oliver (Ewan McGregor), whose father Hal (Christopher Plummer) admits he has always been gay following the death of Oliver's mother. A short period of enjoyable exploration of Hal's long-suppressed sexuality follows (support groups, Pride, nightclubs, and a boyfriend, Andy, well played by Goran Visnjic), but all too soon he is diagnosed with cancer, and his decline and death follows. There are some insights into what being gay was like in the 1950s, Hal's youth, and I enjoyed hearing the recording of Ginsberg reading.

The story then follows Oliver, who has always struggled to form meaningful, long-lasting relationships, and who is trying again with Anna (Melanie Laurent) despite being in the depths of grief. A somewhat happy, if bittersweet ending concludes the film.

It left me melancholic, although not unhappily so, and I would definitely recommend seeing this film. A good film for an autumn Sunday afternoon. Not so great for a hot summer Saturday.
***

Cecil says: I felt very like Bea on this one: somewhat duped by the film's preview, which was trying to sell it as a hilarious look at life as an elderly gay man. In fact it was really about grief and sadness, so no wonder we both came away feeling even less like skipping down the street afterwards than we would have anyway on an afternoon of sultry heat.

The shame was that this film was showing at the Little Theatre in Rochester, New York. This is a cinema that sells itself on 'foreign and independent film', but I guess they ran out of such movies, so this was the best on offer this weekend.

It's just two years since my own father died - also of cancer - so I inevitably related to many of the things Ewan McGregor was going through (and it is no surprise to learn that the storyline is actually autobiographical). But maybe if I had known that this was the plot, I might not have chosen such an anniversary reminder.

If Ewan McGregor's character was believable, I can't say the same about his girlfriend, Anna. A bit of a mystery; with an apparently suicidal father (yep, gets cheerier, the more you hear, huh?) and a life without roots. But we don't really get to see much of what makes her tick, which makes me wonder how well Mike Mills knew her, if this is indeed autobiographical?

I didn't like this as much as Bea did; certainly felt duped by the film's release write-up; and can barely even remember any of the scenes about the Dad being gay, so irrelevant they seemed to the underlying plot of grief...

**