Can a film about death and disappointments be charming, even droll? It’s a difficult thing to pull off, but Mike Mills has done it with just his second feature film. It helped that he had the smarts to take a chance and create an unlikely ensemble: Scot Ewan McGregor, Canadian Christopher Plummer, Frenchwoman Melanie Laurent and Croatian Goran Visnjic. The four have turned Mills’s saucy script into something special. “Beginners” takes place on two levels, the present and the past. Oliver (McGregor) still hasn’t come to terms with the death of his father, months after his passing. The illustrator ignores important portrait commissions, instead spending his days working on a series he calls “The History of Sadness.” In a quite natural way, as memories pop in and out of Oliver’s consciousness, we learn about his parents’ complicated marriage and his father’s last days. Hal (Plummer) comes out after his wife dies. But just as he begins to live — taking a younger lover (Visnjic) — he learns he has terminal cancer.
Watching his parents’ passionless marriage has made Oliver commitment-phobic. But when his friends drag him out to a party one night, he meets the luminous Anna (Laurent). “It’s embarrassing,” he tells a friend. “I’m 38 and I’m falling for a girl again.”
| On screen |
| ‘Beginners’ |
| 4 out of 5 stars |
| Stars: Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, Melanie Laurent |
| Director: Mike Mills |
| Rated: R for language and some sexual content |
| Running time: 105 minutes |
She’s a French actress briefly in L.A. Briefly everywhere, really, as she runs from stability much like Oliver does. The only permanence in Oliver’s life now is his father’s dog, Arthur, an adorable Jack Russell terrier whom Oliver treats as human, giving him a quite hilarious tour of his new abode.
The plot might sound absurd, but the basic outline of it really happened to writer-director Mills and his own father. Perhaps that’s why the film feels so real, never melodramatic or ridiculously heartwarming. It shows us how a mother and father have a subtle effect on their child, despite his best efforts to move beyond them, as we see little habits from both in the adult Mike. There are no easy answers to pain and confusion in real life, and there are no easily tied-up strings here, either.
McGregor and Laurent are outstanding. They have an easy, though sometimes awkward chemistry, as two hurt people about to get into something over their heads. This is the film Hollywood romantic comedies should strive to be more like: deeply serious, deeply satisfying and deeply seductive.
