All Fun and Gay

The death of a long-time spouse can be devastating. Hal (Plummer) deals both with loss and liberation. A life,and a wife,that he liked is now gone,leaving him not your garden variety widower. He puts out ads in the personal sections of the local paper,about being “mature” and “horny”,and speedily acquires a much younger lover. The film begins backwards,with Hal’s death,with his son Oliver (Ewan McGregor) trying to cope with not just a parental death,but a life that he lived looking at his parents living the life they did. To his young eyes,it seemed that his mother and father were forever in an arid relationship,pecking each other on the cheek without discernible passion. We see mother and son spending lots of time,the mother dealing with her Jewishness (this was the time of the Nazis,and Hitler and World War II),and her husband’s latent homosexuality,and finding refuge in abstruse art exhibitions,and ironic chats with her son.

Parts of this film feel too fey. Especially because the pretty girl who catches the morose Oliver’s eye,just happens to be French. Anna (Melanie Laurent,who was in Inglorious Bastards) sports tousled hair,and an air of winsomeness and hurt wisdom. She’s the kind of girl who can take one look at a man and declare that he’s “sad”. But there’s enough in the film which saves it from drowning in preciousness: even the dog who communicates with his human owners through speech bubbles seems reasonably cute more often than not.

The reason for the staying with the film is simple. Hal’s act of finding fulfillment at the fag end,ha ha,of his life,is one of courage and forthrightness,which comes from the honest writing. The film is based on director Mike Mills’s own father’s story,who came out at 75: the real-life-ness comes from real life. “I looked at the husbands,not the wives,when I went to parties”,Hal tells his son. Hal agrees to a life of tamping down upon his real self (he knew about his “tendencies” when he was twelve: at that time homosexuality was considered a disease) when the girl who proposes to him says she understands who he really is,and doesn’t really mind. But it’s never that simple,is it? The sheer delight,erotic desire mixed with pure fun,that is visible in Hal’s being (a critic called it,rightly,“radiating gayness”) is really what lifts this film. And gives the fumbling Oliver (McGregor’s good too) hope that he can actually find someone who will love him for who he is. Even if it is a French girl who also has unresolved daddy issues.