Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on February 2012

A few months after his mother passes away, Oliver (an excellent Ewan McGregor), an artist and idly melancholy commitment-phobe, is informed by his 75-year-old father (an even better Christopher Plummer), with some pride and considerable relief, that he is gay. Oliver has no problem with the revelation per se, but what affects him most is the exuberance with which his dad embraces his new lifestyle with his new, much younger boyfriend—not because he begrudges the man his happiness, but because it underlines his own longstanding inability to accept love, notably that being offered by his current actress squeeze (played nicely by Melanie Laurent). The story moves fluidly among three time frames: Oliver’s childhood flashbacks, the period between his dad’s outing himself and his death, and then a time after he is gone. At the bottom line, this honest and sincere (and, by the way, semi-autobiographical) tale about both romantic and filial love from Mike Mills (Thumbsucker) is about hope and a kind of never-too-late optimism. All this soul-searching is frequently leavened by some wonderful wry humor. Like the Jack Russell terrier with his subtitled observations on the human condition.