‘Jimpa’ Review: Olivia Colman and John Lithgow Star in a Muddled LGBT Family Drama

The titular main character of “Jimpa” is a man that’s charming one moment and exasperating the next. Jim — named Jimpa by his wide-eyed nonbinary grandchild Frances (Aud Mason-Hyde) — is a longtime activist for gay rights, generous to the people he cares about, and often as witty and charismatic as any character John Lithgow has ever played. But as his daughter, filmmaker Hannah (Olivia Colman), notes frequently, he’s also stubborn and selfish, with a tendency to disappoint the people that rely on him. The movie centered around him proves similarly frustrating.

“Jimpa” is a well-meaning drama with a lot on its mind about queer elders, unconventional families, and growing to understand your parent as a human being. But between an over-reliance on woozy indie filmmaking staples — from its soft lighting to its plodding, overly delicate score — and a central family dynamic that never feels legible, the end result is more irritating than enlightening.

Directed by Sophie Hyde — best known for the acclaimed two-hander “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” — “Jimpa” populates its golden-hued queer Amsterdam streets with a variety of minor characters, but it’s essentially a three-hander between three generations of an unconventional family. Over the summer, as Hannah begins pre-production on a film based upon her father’s coming out and decision to leave her, her sister, and their mother behind in Adelaide when she was just a teen, she takes Frances on a trip to visit their grandpa. As Frances awkwardly reveals to Hannah as they’re in line for the plane, this trip is also a test run of sorts — tired of their small Adelaide high school, Frances is craving a bigger queer community for themselves, and wants to spend a school year living in Amsterdam with Jim to achieve it.

As the pair arrive in Jim’s handsomely decorated townhouse, the man plays the entertainer for his “Grandthing,” introducing them to his friend group of aging queens and regaling tales of his days fighting for queer rights — shown in brief cutaway flashbacks where a silent Bryn Chapman Parish plays a young Jim, all of which look like something out of music video for a queer pop artist. As this seduction of sorts happens, Hannah lurks in the background worried her child will end up disappointed, while also growing increasingly worried about Jim’s ever-encroaching mortality.

It’s all great material for a messy and uniquely queer story of family tension, but the screenplay for “Jimpa” — which Hyde cowrote with Matthew Cormack — seems afraid to let the conflict boil to anything hotter than lukewarm. The dialogue is overly blunt and doesn’t leave much to your imagination, as Hannah and Jim’s various friends openly speak about his faults and failings, while showing little in the way of real anger or hurt towards him. All of the tension and resentment is on the surface, and what’s their proves to be disappointingly shallow.

One of the best actors working today, Colman valiantly tries to carry the film, and she wrings some genuine heartache out of the pain and resentment Hannah buries. But she’s underserved by a script that’s both overly broad and uncertain of how charred and tense the father-daughter relationship is supposed to be. Hannah can somehow casually chat with her husband and friends about how her father is a self-absorbed man on track to hurt her child, while simultaneously attempting to mount a film based on his abandonment of her that presents their relationship as rosy and uncomplicated.

It’s a central contradiction the film never makes coherent, and a bizarre vestigial subplot about her attraction to Jim’s assistant (Eamon Farren) only underscores how loose a grasp “Jimpa” has on this woman — and how her husband Harry (Daniel Henshall) might as well be absent entirely from how little the film can conceive a place for him in its dynamics.

The other two points in the central triangle aren’t much stronger. Frances, in particular, is a thin outline of a stereotypical Gen Z baby gay, and Mason-Hyde lacks the acting chops to make the character’s half-formed nature feel like a reflection of their youth rather than thin writing; a magical night out discovering the queer scene of Amsterdam doesn’t really convey a sense of excitement when the characters are busy talking about polyamory and queerness in a way that feels instructional to the audience rather than natural.

Jim, as the center around which these characters orbit, fares better. And it helps that Lithgow ably conveys the charm that draws an entourage toward him, the arrogance that they’ve all decided to put up with, and the subtle insecurities and fears of aging. At the same time, the character doesn’t have much to bounce off of: his arguments against Frances (whom he constantly misgenders and apologizes to) feel like rote attempts to replicate cross-generational queer arguments rather than anything specific to these people in this moment of their lives.

Just when it feels like their conflict has hit a turning point to go somewhere interesting, the final act abruptly pivots into conventional tear-jerker territory. It’s a plot point that has roots in real life — Hyde based the film on her own experiences with a queer father and a nonbinary child — which means there is some real, raw emotion lurking underneath its predictable beats. At the same time, Hyde’s closeness to the material might be why the film is so eager to brush thornier, messier feelings under the rug in favor of something much less interesting. Throughout the film, Hannah has arguments with people she’s auditioning for her project, insisting that her movie will be a story about “love, not conflict” and ignoring criticism of how empty a film like that would be. It’s to the detriment of “Jimpa” that it makes essentially the same mistake.

Grade: C-

“Jimpa” premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

Want to stay up to date on IndieWire’s film reviews and critical thoughts? Subscribe here to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings — all only available to subscribers.