BEGINNERS

It’s the year 2003 and Oliver (Ewan McGregor) has just found out his 75-year-old father (Christopher Plummer) is gay. He doesn’t just come out of the closet, he comes out with a new wardrobe, a young boyfriend and a group of LA gay activist friends. There’s your film right there. But this isn’t the case. Skip forward five years and Oliver meets Ana (Melanie Laurent) a vivacious and nomadic French actress. She is lonely, Oliver is lonely – they’re both troubled and running from relationships before they can even begin. But using his father as inspiration, Oliver takes a chance on Ana, embarking on a love-fest worthy of a Woody Allen film. At times it’s too much: the montages of ruffled, bed-hair kissing, a scene when they roller skate through an ornate hotel lobby and when we first meet Ana she is wearing an Annie Hall-style suit. It is a film for romantics in that eating-hotdogs-in-Paris kind of way. For everyone else there is a straight-talking (through subtitles, just go with it) dog who, at many times, upstages McGregor. (AH)  ***