Beginners

Beginners—with its fractured timeline, its old-timey soundtrack, its hipster costume-party meet-cute, its talking dog (via subtitles)—could easily have been just another insufferably quirky American independent film, but it's clearly a heartfelt work, and that lends its quirks an organic feeling missing from most other movies of its ilk. Writer/director Mike Mills isn't trying to be cute. He's telling a story that's important to him. Ewan McGregor stars as Oliver, a graphic artist trying to deal with the recent death of his father, Hal (Christopher Plummer). As Oliver begins a romance with a French actress, Anna (Mélanie Laurent), he thinks back on his relationship with his dad, who came out of the closet at the age of 75, and seemingly began to live for the first time. Mills adeptly cuts back and forth between Oliver's ruminations about the constrained life Hal led, Hal's belated rejuvenation and subsequent illness, and Oliver's own romantic foibles. Mills makes a compelling point about the generational difference between Hal's struggle to conceal what he knew he was (and his cathartic release from that) and Oliver's struggle to figure out who he is and what he wants. Unsurprisingly, Hal's story is more compelling, but Mills' writing has enough wit and heart, and McGregor and Laurent have enough charm to keep Beginners from becoming too imbalanced.