The title of Sophie Hyde’s “Jimpa” is a portmanteau: the traditional nickname sounded too old to Jim (John Lithgow), a gay professor living in Amsterdam. So, when Jim’s nonbinary grandchild Francis (Aud Mason-Hyde) pays Jim a visit, that’s what they invariably call him. He, in turn, calls Francis his “grandthing.”
Such cutesy details overflow in “Jimpa,” a diffuse drama that, like a caramel stroopwafel, slips from sweet into cloying. Francis, a diffident 16-year-old, is an L.G.B.T.Q. club president in Adelaide, Australia. They are also unusually attached to their mom, Hannah (Olivia Colman), a filmmaker. (The pair often bathes together.)
Despite this intimacy, Francis, at the start of the film, delivers a blow to their parents: They plan to move in with Jimpa in Amsterdam, where they believe a queer education awaits them. Hannah, who still feels the sting of being left behind by Jim decades earlier, is hesitant to let Francis go.
Hyde (“Good Luck to You, Leo Grande”) based the story on her own experiences and cast her child as a lead. Yet the film’s strongest episodes involve not Hannah and Francis but Jim’s pals in Europe. Hyde pairs scenes of the men’s rapport with lyrical shots of them during the AIDS crisis, building historical texture.
The men give “Jimpa” a warm, intergenerational quality, gesturing at the power of queer family over time. If only the film didn’t ask the audience to invest in so very many subplots; the clutter ends up sucking the air out of all of them.
Jimpa Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes. In theaters.
The post ‘Jimpa’ Review: In Search of a Queer Education appeared first on New York Times.
