The first photo from Beginners was unveiled last week, and now two more photos have surfaced. The film's world premiere will be at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. An official description of Beginners is below:
Five years after Thumbsucker, director Mike Mills returns to the Festival with
another winning indie dramedy that balances humour, sorrow and romance with
aplomb.
Beginners deftly juggles two chronologies to tell the heartwarming
story of two major points in the life of Oliver (Ewan McGregor), a talented
illustrator.
One timeline follows the slow-burning deterioration of
Oliver’s father (Christopher Plummer), who is dying of cancer. But his impending
death is not the only news that has caught Oliver off guard; his divorced
father, at the age of seventy-five, has also come out of the closet. Just like
that, he gets a new wardrobe, a new boyfriend and an entirely new outlook on
life.
Following his father’s death, a bereaved Oliver becomes somewhat
of a shut-in. As Beginners takes us through his personal journey, the film
flashes forward, intercutting a budding relationship between Oliver and a young
French actress (Inglourious Basterd’s Mélanie Laurent) whom he meets at a
costume party that he attends under duress. The twin narratives gradually reveal
subtle associations about how Oliver reacts to both these unpredictable
relationships, and how his father and girlfriend motivate him to surpass his
self-prescribed limitations.
McGregor and Laurent have natural onscreen
chemistry, and Plummer is outstanding in his rich portrayal of a dying man who
is finally able to live honestly, breaking out of his shell so near the end of
his life. The ensemble cast lends the film a warm, understated aura that never
feels the least bit contrived.
Mills is at the top of his game in
crafting dynamic mood pieces that steer clear of the usual trappings found in
American independent cinema. The outcome is a thoroughly enjoyable character
study about people opening up and discovering themselves despite age,
preconceptions and illness. [Jane Schoettle]
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