Australian filmmaker Sophie Hyde last wowed audiences with her 2022 sex-positive dramedy Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, starring Emma Thompson. For her latest feature, Jimpa, Hyde returns to her home soil for a local production. However, she still brings international star power with her through the casting of leads Olivia Colman and John Lithgow.
Colman plays Hannah, the mother to a non-binary teenager named Frances (Aud Mayson-Hyde), who she has with husband Harry (Daniel Henshall). The family travels to Amsterdam to visit Hannah’s gay father Jim (Lithgow), who Frances fondly calls Jimpa. Hannah is a filmmaker and her latest project is inspired by her upbringing and personal experience, which is the reason for the visit. Jimpa is a larger than life figure who married Hannah’s mother before coming out and moving to Amsterdam. There’s a lot of family history, although Hannah doesn’t seem to be resentful towards her father. Frances looks up to Jimpa and wants to explore their own queerness, leading Frances to ask their mother to stay with Jimpa in Amsterdam for a year. Hannah and Harry are hesitant, but Hannah starts to lean more towards the idea as she reflects on her parenting and relationship with her own father.
Jimpa is a noticeably tender and empathetic story, which is no surprise given how personal this film is to Hyde. The script is based on her own real life experience with her father, and she even cast her child Mason-Hyde as Frances. The unconventional family dynamic, made up of a gay grandfather, straight parents and non-binary child, is quite unique and not something that has been seen on screen before. It allows for the exploration of a lot of themes and ideas around queerness, its fluidity and what it means to different people. One of the most interesting aspects here is intergenerational queerness, which is examined through the lens of Jimpa and Frances’s relationship. While Jimpa is a proud and liberated gay man who has had to fight to be seen, he himself can be close-minded to other forms of queerness due to his age. He thinks there are only gays and lesbians, narrow-mindedly stating that the concepts of bisexuality and gender fluidity are made up. This obviously hurts Frances, and crushes their perception of the worldly Jimpa they looked up to. What is being presented is undoubtedly thought-provoking, but a clear message or conclusion is hard to grasp. The film ends highlighting the strength of love and family above all else, but in terms of what it wants to say in relation to queerness seems a bit unfocused. Dialogue fluctuates from conversational debates between characters to slightly preachy monologues that feel less authentic. There’s also a suspension of disbelief required for smaller details of the film, such as to why a mother and her teenage child are constantly bathing together. Despite some flaws in the script, Colman and Lithgow brilliantly anchor it all, although their Aussie accents could use a little bit of work. It is wonderful to see such big names taking on challenging roles like this, particularly within the Australian screen sector.
There are some messy script elements, but Jimpa still remains an admirable piece of work that has a lot worth mulling over.