Director and co-writer (with Matthew Cormack) Sophie Hyde She draws inspiration from her own life as the daughter of a gay man and mother of a transgender teenager to tell the poignant story of an Australian family on a visit to Amsterdam to spend time with father and grandfather, affectionately known as Jimba.
Hyde most recently directed the Emma Thompson sex comedy Good luck to you, Leo Grandewhich also premiered on Sundance Film festival. This device features exceptional leading performance from Olivia Colman As Hannah, the director (think Hyde) she navigates her experience growing up in a family where the father left after 13 years to find a new life as a gay man in Amsterdam. Now with a trans teen, Frances (played by the director’s non-binary trans child). I would like Mason Hydewho is exploring her own identity and emerging sexuality, takes a trip to visit Jimba (John Lithgow), a gay but perpetually eccentric, life-affirming man who hangs out with his also elderly gay friends known as “aunties” and representing a generation that survived AIDS and other disasters to try to put it all in context now.
Hana also tries to put things in context, as this visit makes her child want to find new meaning in his life and they announce plans to stay abroad with Jimba for a year of high school abroad. Why not? Jimpa is a walking billboard for a lifestyle he’s changed on a dime, probably to the detriment of his family and to Hannah’s endless confusion. Now, but. She finds herself the daughter and mother of two people determined to live their true lives.
Hyde uses her life experience with her father, Jim, who died at 68, and Odd. She sets her camera on this strange, multi-generational family in a sometimes happy, sometimes sad, and sometimes complicated way in order to make a film that aims to show LGBTQ+ culture in a way like any other family—human beings coming together in joy and pain. And hope and heartache. In other words: the stuff of life. There’s a surprising development when Jimba suffers a stroke, and Hana, a film director, finds a way to find out Ha A story for the immobile man who can still hear it and tentatively demonstrates it by pressing his hand “yes” and “no.” In this beautifully written scene, Coleman simply excels.
Before that comes, the film belongs to Lithgow, who has one of his best outings in recent years as a selfish man determined to do things his way, no matter the cost, but with a loving heart. It’s a great performance, as the actor goes completely naked several times as we know he likes to sit naked a lot. Mason Hyde, playing in territory she clearly knows, is perfectly cast, but this is not autobiography but rather a fictional story suggested by the director’s personal experience, and she is able to use her craft to create conversations that she herself could never have. She has her own gemba.
With a terrific supporting cast, Hyde proves she knows how to get the best out of actors and tell stories of pure humanity, even as some of those lifestyles come under attack in everyday politics. This film leaves that debate elsewhere. Above all, Jimba First of all it is about family.
Producers are: Liam Hine, Hyde, Brian Mason, and Marilyn Slott
address: Jimba
festival: Sundance (premiere)
exit: Sophie Hyde
scenario: Sophie Hyde, Matthew Cormack
ejaculate: Olivia Colman, John Lithgow, Odd Mason Hyde, Daniel Henshall, Kate Box, Eamonn Farren, Zoe Love-Smith, Romana Freddy, Hans Kesting.
Sales agents: CAA, images of the protagonist
Operating time: 2 hours 10 minutes
