Writer-director Mike Mills’ Beginners is the sort of movie that you never really stop wanting to love, even as it flits about and tests the boundaries of your attention. Warm, full of life and little tidbits that illuminate the bonds of love in a more elliptical yet realistic fashion than the plodding literalness of most conventional Hollywood relationship dramedies, it is distinctive — the product of a singular point-of-view, not some canned corporate mandate for surefire emotional response.



When Oliver (Ewan McGregor), a quietly grief-stricken graphic artist, meets unpredictable actress Anna (Mélanie Laurent, above) at a party, it triggers memories of his father Hal (Christopher Plummer), who passed away several months earlier, after a battle with cancer that followed his coming out of the closet after 45 years of marriage to Oliver’s mother. As the pair try to craft a relationship, Oliver thinks back over his own life, and ponders the lives of his parents.

Mills (Thumbsucker) has a canted sensibility that gives his movie a handcrafted, idiosyncratic feel, unsurprising since Beginners is based on personal experiences that dovetail with the narrative. Interweaving scenes from Oliver’s childhood with other narrated bits, and sequences with both Hal and Anna, Mills crafts an impressionistic snapshot of a guy fumbling toward a greater contentment. Scene to scene, this makes for some magical moments that capture how life lessons often arrive on tape delay, occurring long after some inciting incident. Mills, too, has a superb instinct for low-key comedy, evidenced in the sardonic subtitled interjections of Hal’s forlorn Jack Russell terrier, which Oliver takes in.

But there isn’t much of a sense of destination here. Despite ample chemistry, the love story between Oliver and Anna never completely sets sail, at least not in a way that rips and tears at a viewer’s heart, in pained identification. And while some of the maladies or hang-ups that plague the pair seem elucidated, there’s also a nagging feeling that they aren’t given a full, substantial airing and accounting by the characters themselves. This is a messy valentine — fitfully wonderful but also incomplete. (Focus, R, 104 minutes)