Writer/director Mike Mills' own experience when his seventy-four year old father came out as gay. After dad (Christopher Plummer) comes out, he takes the fast track to gayness, and soon is involved in various gay charity groups, going out to nightclubs, and takes a much younger man as a lover (Goran Visnijic). After his father dies (I'm not spoiling anything, he's already dead when the film begins, the story is told mostly in flashback) Mills (Ewan MacGregor) meets a girl at a costume party (Melanie Laurent...she's dressed as a man, nice touch) and soon learns to be brave in love just like his father.
This is very lopsided. I get that our parent's relationship informs the way we handle our own relationships, and his father's example is a powerful and valid way to frame this story. But the MacGregor/Laurent romance, which is the bulk of the movie, is unconvincing and uncompelling. The father/son story line is much more interesting, and MacGregor and Plummer have so much screen chemistry that when the film switches to present-day, it's like the movie hits the pause button. It's interrupting the better movie.
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