by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $13.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Olivia Colman, John Lithgow, Aud Mason-Hyde, Daniel Henshall
Intro:
... moments of poignancy ...
Sophie Hyde doesn’t go for easy answers, and that is a good thing. From her prolific run of short films in the 2000s, to her transition to features in the 2010s, to stepping into TV productions, her particular brand of raw inquisition on sexuality, gender identity, and the cultural gaps that certain ‘ignorables’ can slip into has maintaineda consistent poignancy over the past two decades.
And yet, even for a filmmaker who so continually (and endearingly) wears her heart on her sleeve, her latest cuts closer than arguably any of her previous work.
Jimpa is based on Hyde’s own familial connections, and it is upfront about it from the jump. From Olivia Colman starring as Hannah, a filmmaker who is in the process of making a film about her father (John Lithgow as the titular Jimpa), to Jimpa himself modelled after Hyde’s own father who tragically passed away in 2018, to Hannah’s teenaged non-binary child Frances played by Hyde’s own enby offspring Aud Mason-Hyde.
The film’s strongest moments are between Jimpa and Frances. Partly because they represent the most consistent showing of the film’s Adelaide roots (going from Lithgow’s Dundee-isms in Pitch Perfect 3 to him actually doing the accent here is refreshing in the weirdest way), but mainly because of the generational gap between their characters that informs much of the dialogue. An HIV-positive activist from the ‘friend of Dorothy’ days, and a trans/GNC person who teaches her parents (and likely a sizeable amount of the audience) the word ‘compersion’. It’s like a less-harangued version of Ellie & Abbie (& Ellie’s Dead Aunt) in the way that it bridges the work that went into the modern Queer movement, and those experiencing it in the now.
With its framing of Gen Z LGBTQ+ slang as a showing of personal conviction and understanding (a nice reprieve from the cynical nausea that peppers so much modern-day discourse), it continues Hyde’s penchant for highlighting sex as something liberating and also daunting, no matter what age your journey starts. But it often feels like the film gets lost on its own journey across the family’s subplots. At points, Hannah’s early insistence that you can make a drama without conflict reads less as a statement to move past and more a challenge statement for the film itself … and one that is actively struggled with.
Jimpa has been billed as a companion piece to Hyde’s feature debut 52 Tuesdays, and it shares a similar muddle in which character is the main focus. Individually, the three central characters have moments of poignancy (even Jimpa’s crotchetiness lands on uncomfortable truths, like his casual disregard for bisexuality and gender non-conformity), but they’re so sporadic that they feel like happenstance rather than planned. The run time doesn’t help; at minimum, 15 minutes could’ve been cut from the third act, and the film would be substantially less fidgety as a result.
Jimpa marks the first genuine lull for writer/director Sophie Hyde. At its best, it shows her still finding fresh insights about the Queer community, and its core performers are strong. But as therapeutic as it likely was for those who created it (and in creative fields, it is important to recognise such things), that catharsis doesn’t necessarily translate for the audience in its drifting across Amsterdam and arriving at rather plain parental memorialising. Not to say that the film itself is bad, or even that it’s not worth checking out (Aud Mason-Hyde on their own earns the ticket price); just that, compared to the consistency leading up to this point, its failings do sting a bit.
