Sundance: Colman plays a filmmaker struggling to reconcile her resentment toward her gay father in Sophie Hyde's superficial portrait of generational divides.
The title character of “Jimpa” is a charming man one moment and exasperating the next. Jim, called Jimpa by his wide-eyed, non-binary grandchild, Frances (Aud Mason-Hyde), is a longtime LGBTQ+ rights activist, generous to the people he cares about, and often as witty and charismatic as any character John Lithgow has ever played. But, as his filmmaker daughter Hannah (Olivia Colman) frequently points out, he’s also stubborn and self-centered, with a tendency to let down those who depend on him. The film centered on him proves equally frustrating.
Director: Sophie Hyde
Writers: Matthew Cormack, Sophie Hyde
Stars: Aud Mason-Hyde, Olivia Colman, John Lithgow
“Jimpa” is a well-meaning drama that reflects on older LGBTQ+ people, unconventional families, and the process of understanding one’s parents as human beings. But between the overuse of indie film clichés—from its muted lighting to its languid, overly delicate score—and a central family dynamic that never quite rings true, the end result is more irritating than insightful.
Directed by Sophie Hyde, known for the acclaimed film “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,” “Jimpa” populates the golden streets of Amsterdam with a variety of supporting characters, but it’s essentially a three-character story across three generations of an unconventional family. Over the summer, as Hannah begins pre-production on a film based on her father’s coming out and his decision to leave her, her sister, and their mother in Adelaide when she was just a teenager, she takes Frances on a trip to visit their grandfather.
As Frances awkwardly reveals to Hannah while waiting in line for the plane, this trip is also something of a test: tired of their small Adelaide high school, Frances longs for a larger LGBTQ+ community and wants to spend a school year living in Amsterdam with Jim to achieve it. When they arrive at Jim's elegant home, he acts the gracious host for his grandson, introducing him to his group of friends, a group of older drag queens, and telling stories of his days fighting for LGBTQ+ rights, shown in brief flashbacks where a silent Bryn Chapman Parish plays a young Jim, all with an aesthetic reminiscent of a music video by an LGBTQ+ pop artist. As this kind of seduction unfolds, Hannah lurks in the background, worried that her son will end up disappointed, and increasingly anxious about Jim's growing frailty.
All of this provides excellent material for a complex and uniquely queer story about family tensions, but the screenplay for "Jimpa"—written by Hyde in collaboration with Matthew Cormack—seems reluctant to let the conflict reach anything more than a lukewarm intensity. The dialogue is too direct and leaves little to the imagination, as Hannah and Jim's friends openly discuss his flaws and failures, showing little anger or pain towards him. All the tension and resentment are superficial, and what is shown is disappointingly banal.
Colman, one of the best actresses working today, bravely tries to carry the film, and manages to convey genuine emotional turmoil from the pain and resentment that Hannah represses. However, the script doesn't do her justice, as it's too general and doesn't clearly define the degree of tension and complexity in the father-daughter relationship.
Hannah can casually talk to her husband and friends about how her father is a self-centered man who is about to hurt her son, while at the same time trying to make a film based on the abandonment she suffered at his hands, presenting their relationship as idyllic and uncomplicated. This is a fundamental contradiction that the film never manages to resolve, and a strange, lingering subplot about her attraction to Jim's assistant (Eamon Farren) only underscores how superficially "Jimpa" portrays this woman, and how insignificant her husband Harry (Daniel Henshall) is, whose presence is practically nonexistent in the film's dynamics.
The other two characters in the central triangle aren't much more convincing. Frances, in particular, is a superficial portrayal of a stereotypical Gen Z gay woman, and Mason-Hyde lacks the acting chops to make the character's incompleteness feel like a reflection of her youth rather than poor writing; a magical night discovering Amsterdam's queer scene doesn't quite convey a sense of excitement when the characters are busy discussing polyamory and sexual diversity in a way that feels didactic for the audience rather than natural.
Jim, as the center around which these characters orbit, fares better. It helps that Lithgow skillfully conveys the charm that draws his entourage in, the arrogance they've all decided to tolerate, and the subtle insecurities and fears of aging. At the same time, the character doesn't have much to interact with: his discussions with Frances (whom he constantly misgenders and then apologizes for) feel like rote attempts to replicate intergenerational discussions about the queer community rather than something specific to these people at this moment in their lives.
Just when it seems their conflict has reached a turning point to develop in an interesting way, the final act veers sharply into conventional, tear-jerking melodrama territory. It's a plot twist rooted in real life—Hyde based the film on her own experiences with a queer father and a non-binary child—which means there's a real, raw emotion simmering beneath its predictable plot. At the same time, Hyde's closeness to the material might be why the film rushes to gloss over the thornier, more complex feelings in favor of something far less interesting. Throughout the film, Hannah argues with the people auditioning for her project, insisting that her film will be a story about "love, not conflict," and ignoring criticisms about how empty such a film would be. To "Jimpa's" detriment, she essentially makes the same mistake.
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