In Jimpa, Olivia Colman plays an Australian filmmaker, Hannah, determined to make an autobiographical drama “without conflict”. Everyone around her is (rightfully) suspicious. Her father, Jim (John Lithgow), came out as gay after she was born and chose to stay with the family to co-parent, only to then leave Adelaide around a decade later, feeling stifled by the culture, and wanting to pursue a career as an LGBTQ+ politician and Aids advocate in Amsterdam.
Hannah wants to make a film that celebrates what she views as a necessary act of self-liberation, even if her voice wavers when she adds it’s also about a “daughter learning not to need her father so much”. It’s a striking premise, made all the more striking by the fact Hannah serves as an autobiographical stand-in for the film’s writer and director, Sophie Hyde, who’s cast her child, Aud Mason-Hyde, as their own stand-in, Hannah’s kid Frances.
Yet Hyde, who’s otherwise been so willing to embrace the nuances of co-dependent friendships and sex work, in her films Animals (2019) and Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (2022), has gotten a little too close to her onscreen avatar here. Jimpa is a film about a director who’s too afraid of conflict that is, itself, too afraid of conflict.
Frances, who is openly trans, queer and non-binary, has started to exhibit some of Jim’s same restlessness. They announce during the family’s latest visit to Amsterdam that they want to live with Jim, who calls himself Jimpa (grandpa is too gauche for him). All the while, she continues to prep her film, receiving nothing but pushback. An actor (Cody Fern, as himself) questions what exactly a father’s choice between ambition and family is if it isn’t a conflict?
And so rather than feeling, as Hyde no doubt intended, like an inter-generational burst of LGBTQ+ joy and affirmation, Jimpa invests all its energy into smoothing down any potentially ruffled feathers. It’s a little too convenient to rely so much on the natural tenderness in Colman’s eyes, or the way Lithgow’s exuberance likes to ricochet around a room like a bat trapped indoors.
Colman tries to do more with the role than the film allows her to. She tries to sit in Hannah’s discomfort and express what is repeatedly vocalised, that “you’re allowed to be angry or disappointed by [your parents] and still think the world of [them]”. The actor allows herself to shrink away under Lithgow’s more outsized performance, only to emerge, in full emotional force, for a final monologue that proves to be the film’s most moving touch.
Hannah repeatedly expresses her fears that Jim will, inevitably, hurt Frances, and he, in turn, reveals a limited understanding of gender and sexuality beyond his own experience (“if you say you’re bi, you’re just confused” is a typical line of his). Hyde, however, practically leapfrogs over these moments so the film can swiftly return to rosier territory, namely discussions between Jim and his friends about their own histories, or simplistically dreamy flashbacks to old parties and romances.
Characters, in turn, are reduced to mouthpieces for their generation and identity, as Frances is forced to explain to their elders (and, in turn, the audience) what compersion means – a key idea in polyamory, that one can feel joy from watching a partner engage in romantic or sexual relationships with others. There’s little room for flaws, even when the film does well to explain why those flaws aren’t necessarily the sum of a person. Jimpa proves that there is such a thing as being too close to the material.
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Dir: Sophie Hyde. Starring: Olivia Colman, Aud Mason-Hyde, John Lithgow, Kate Box, Daniel Henshall, Eamon Farren. Cert 15, 113 minutes
‘Jimpa’ is available on digital platforms from 11 May
