Beginners

Turning over a new leaf is easier said than done for Ewan McGregor in this quirky fable. He plays Oliver, a tortured artist who's given guidance by his father Hal (Christopher Plummer) - a man who, after the death of his wife, and at the age of 75, finally comes out as gay. Inspired by events in his own life, writer/director Mike Mills (Thumbsucker) adopts a sophisticated approach that belies the film's potential sitcom premise. He creates a colourful scrapbook of Oliver's life, flitting between observations of Hal's new-found joy with a younger partner (ER's Goran Visnjic) and his own attempts to achieve intimacy with Anna (Mélanie Laurent). She is every man's fantasy of a French woman, so Oliver's scepticism about love occasionally feels warranted. Plummer gives a textured portrayal as Hal (which earned him the year's best supporting actor Oscar), but it's the character of Oliver, sensitively played by McGregor, that rings truest, even when he takes advice from a subtitled dog. Darker thoughts take hold later on, but the light of a dawning realisation is never too far away.