Beginners

Ewan McGregor, enchanting as ever, stars as Oliver in this bitter-sweet film about eternal beginners in the field of love. Oliver’s 75-year-old father (Christopher Plummer), who spent the past half-century in a model marriage, comes out to his son and with stirring energy throws himself into a new life of night-clubbing and a relationship with a young hottie. A fatal diagnosis catches up to him though. Oliver lives through all this with him and later takes inspiration from recollections of his Dad’s last years at the beginning of his own new romance, all the while an inherited terrier provides him with advice and commentary. The basis for the story was the director’s (Mike Mills) real relationship with his father.