‘Oh my God, did my dad and I fight’: Olivia Colman on the complaints that led to new film Jimpa | Video

Men Jimpa, Olivia Colman she plays a woman named Hannah who leaves Adelaide with her husband and 16-year-old son to visit her father in Amsterdam. This is Jimpa – a word that makes sense when you know it’s Jim and grandma’s team. At the airport, young Frances, who is trans, drops a bombshell: she wants to move to the Netherlands and finish her studies there. Hannah and her husband, Harry, responded with wisdom, without fear.

But as soon as he arrived in Amsterdam, Jimpa, he was playing John Lithgowbrings enough drama to everyone – something he has been doing for 40 years, ever since he left his family to live a life of shame in Australia at the end of the 20th century. The film also shows the life he lived instead.

“When I first met John,” says director Sophie Hyde, “he said, ‘Jimpa should be naked!’ He was sure about that.” And Lithgow, now in his 80s, is no exception in the film – though mostly because he likes to imitate life scenes.

Hannah is a filmmaker trying to sell autobiographical ideas: what if there were two parents in the 80s – the father came out as gay, but the couple remained happily together as platonic parents, and even when the father left the country, there was no conflict? We see him on Zoom calls, producers asking: “Where can this play be that?”, the exact opposite of the family history played out on TV.

And, of course and drama in all the love of the family? Hyde ponders the question. “Can we ask people in our situation to respond to us kindly, when often our instinct is to be in an immediate conflict? How do we argue in love? It is one of the things that makes this film so slow, so that all its main themes – the conflict of many generations, the disappointment of friends, the septuagenarian lovers who refuse to grow up – deal with the main question: has the world lost its power of reconciliation, or its ideas?

Colman is speaking via video chat from LA, Hyde is calling from Adelaide. Next to her is her own son, Aud Mason-Hyde, who plays Frances in the film. “I spent my 19th birthday on this set,” she says, “wrestling with my fake mother, led by my real mother, and the energy of the whole thing, when you look away, makes you think, ‘What are we doing?'” However, their behavior is not the same as Frances. “I am outspoken and speak my mind, and they only speak their mind, but they are very careful.”

Frances and Jimpa have a very romantic relationship, but there is a lot to keep the peace, everything goes in the same direction, from the young to the old. In that sense, says Mason-Hyde, it’s pretty on the nose. “In a very high way, to be a trans youth, you are always asked to reduce your needs and wants to be open and accepted, to be one of the people who are easy to relate to. Do not ask too much about others, whether it is language or politics or unacceptable. . the responsibility of trans youth to comfort everyone.

Colman also found in the film a great parallel, because he lost his father shortly before the shooting. “My dad and I, in real life, used to fight a lot. We loved each other, but oh my God, did we fight, and I don’t really fight with anyone. I learned a lot by pretending to be someone else, being with Sophie/Hannah, just listening and being quiet. I enjoyed being a better person.”

Lithgow – with whom Colman worked on The Crown, he as Churchill, she as the Queen – often reminds him of his own father. “Sometimes situations would make me wish I could have been calmer with my father when he said a bad word.” I think he would have liked this movie. Colman responds with droll pragmatism: “As long as I can do it, I can use it.”

Hyde’s last movie was 2022’s Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, in which Emma Thompson has a forced sexual awakening with a gay teenager, played by Daryl McCormack. In Jimpa, every character (except Harry) has a sexuality that changes them forever. “I didn’t feel like that was a big decision,” Hyde said. “I was just showing what I always saw in other people, rejecting the stereotypes we make about people based on their age.

“I didn’t want Jim to be gay because he was older. I didn’t want him to be gay. I wanted him to be normal.”

Frances arrives in Amsterdam “intellectualising the right way to be in the world, what it means to be queer, what it means to be non-binary, what it means to get permission, what it means to polyamory” – but without the experience of life. When they have sex with a slightly older girl, although it’s difficult and very different from the teenage sex shown on screen, it’s sad to see them “thinking about being vulnerable with someone else”.

Meanwhile, Hana, whose marriage is open, is having problems with her father’s amanuensis, a very hot, bi, young man. Her sexuality is taken so seriously, while being shown so lightly, that I wonder if that’s what attracted Colman to the role. “No,” he says firmly. “I loved the script. I loved the characters, I loved the story. Then I met Sophie and I loved Sophie.”

We also see Jim, having a normal encounter with dire consequences. “I remember being on the set,” Hyde says, “and thinking, ‘God, I hope this doesn’t read to anyone as a moral message — he goes to the gym, now he’s having a stroke.'”

His son intervenes. Mason-Hyde said: “We had a screening here in Adelaide today, and someone in the audience said a little bit after the film: ‘The kind of sexuality that people have is something that’s really uncomfortable for them. I’ve been thinking about it all day because I just feel that our philosophy – Sophie’s passion as a filmmaker – is very complex: through a queer lens, the sexuality we have helps who we are. How we act, and if we live with it, is a huge part of who we all are.’ It’s very useful for our situation, a conversation between people that is really and really unusual.”

Colman defends the audience member, saying that he may have intended the comment to be “kind.

The critical answer to this film is focused on the question: is it possible to make a drama without conflict? Colman simply responds by referring to the characters as “an elite family, they’ve done bad things that other families can’t change”.

Meanwhile, Mason-Hyde says: “Oh, just being here seems like I have to give it back, you know.” The facts of who you are, and whether you should exist in the first place, are up for debate.

But Colman? He doesn’t read the comments, he says. “I’m not too blind and I don’t want to know. I just thought it was a nice story about nice people and who could have a problem with that?”