Beginners (2011)

A middle aged bachelor (Ewan McGregor), who has trouble holding on to relationships, must cope with not only the revelation that his father (Christopher Plummer) is coming out of the closet as a gay man at the ripe, old age of 75 but that his father has terminal cancer. On paper, this sounds like a schmaltzy disaster ready to happen but director/writer Mike Mills (who based the film on his own father's coming out at age 75) miraculously balances both the innate sadness of the situation with an authentic appreciation of the dark humor inherent in such situations. In other words, it's like TERMS OF ENDEARMENT without the manipulation. Mills provides the film with both a back story and a back history, the repressive 1950s, and both McGregor's parents hiding important layers of themselves which were anathema to white Anglo-Saxon Protestant America at that time. Namely, the father's sexuality and the mother's (beautifully underplayed by Mary Page Keller) Jewish roots. It's a lovely film that echoes the hope that it's never too late for a new beginning. With Melanie Laurent (INGLORIOUS BASTERDS) as the French actress who gives McGregor his second chance, Goran Visnjic as Plummer's young lover and in the film's best performance, a scene stealing Jack Russell called Cosmo who plays Arthur.