Sundance 2025: ‘Jimpa’ is a Heartfelt, Resonant Movie About Openness
by Alex Billington
January 24, 2025
Kicking off the 2025 Sundance Movie Pageant with a winner already. I like this movie. I actually linked with it, even when I am not like anybody in it. Jimpa is the most recent movie written and directed by Australian filmmaker Sophie Hyde, finest identified for her earlier movies Good Luck To You, Leo Grande (at Sundance 2022) and Animals (at Sundance 2019). She’s wonderful at telling intimate queer cinema tales and he or she stays the most effective filmmakers on this realm. Her newest healthful cinema creation is Jimpa – her most private movie but, a semi-autobiographical and self-referential meta story of a household. It simply premiered at Sundance and the expertise was emotional for me, particularly as a result of I’m watching it with none concept of what I am about to see, or the way it will really feel, or who the characters are. And I practically fell in love with each final individual on this movie. In a time the place LGBTQ rights are being challenged by bigoted idiots, a heartfelt, heat and tender movie like that is what we actually want. A reminder that openness and love and assist does make the world go ‘spherical.
Jimpa is co-written by Matthew Cormack & Sophie Hyde, and directed by Sophie Hyde as her 4th function. Olivia Colman stars as Hannah – she travels together with her non-binary teenager Frances, performed by newcomer Aud Mason-Hyde (the filmmaker’s personal little one) and husband, performed by Daniel Henshall, to Amsterdam to go to her homosexual grandfather referred to as “Jimpa” (a portmanteau of his identify Jim and the ending of grandpa). Frances expresses a want to stick with him for a yr there, difficult Hannah’s parenting and forcing her to confront previous points and tackle questions on LGBTQ identification. Frances prefers to be recognized as “they” or “them” and is refereed to by Jimpa as his “grandthing.” John Lithgow stars in one more exceptionally distinctive function as Jimpa – a passionate, quirky, workaholic homosexual man who has spent most of his life combating for LGBTQ rights, and lives comfortably in Amsterdam the place he nonetheless works as a professor. He could be abrasive and brutally sincere, but it surely comes from locations deep inside him, as he all the time tries to remind everybody that he has been combating for many years. However this movie shouldn’t be abrasive, it’s the reverse – it is so heat and supportive.
Above all, the movie is stuffed with so many beautiful characters. Jimpa has quite a few good associates in Amsterdam: a gaggle of old-timer homosexual queens he meets with at a restaurant day by day, together with caretakers, associates, lovers, and college students from his college. Then there’s the household on the heart of all of it: Frances, Hannah, and Harry, plus Jimpa after all. And there is additionally a few new associates that Frances makes exploring the LGBTQ scene in Amsterdam. Each single individual on this movie is knowing and loving and sensible and welcoming. This may increasingly appear a bit cliche or unrealistic, and possibly it’s, however that does not matter as a result of all the level of the movie is to convey us deep into this story and make us really feel the exact same consolation and assist that each one LGBTQ youth want as soon as they’ve come out. It is a movie that fastidiously and earnestly explores sexual identification, relationships, grief, and extra by means of an inter-generational lens. Every of those performances are genuine & healthful, as a result of this movie is making an attempt to show us that selecting kindness and love is all the time attainable and all the time higher. It follows Jimpa as he tries to impart knowledge upon Frances, then will get into hassle when he questions their identification and decisions as a result of he comes from a special era that does not fairly perceive all of it but.
Regardless that I loved this movie immensely, a few of my associates & colleagues I’ve talked to at Sundance didn’t. It’s a tad schmaltzy in its want to keep away from battle in its story, although that by no means actually bothered me. The truth is, I feel this option to make the movie much less about battle and extra in regards to the uplifting feeling of affection & openness, is refreshing this present day. I’ve seen method too many LGBTQ movies the place the story will get violet and harmful and unsettling, and I am glad this movie refuses to dip into that once more. It is so fantastically open, tender, and inspiring – it is the consolation cinema we want extra of now. I loved all the music decisions in it, a number of tracks (by Kishi Bashi) made me teary they had been so good within the second. Hyde additionally consists of fowl sounds within the background all through, which make the movie really feel additional calm & comforting. I significantly love the best way she integrates nostalgic flashback visions that flash briefly on display screen when a few of the characters replicate on their lives and/or their very own upbringing. The movie is commonly fairly ethereal and warm-hearted in ways in which won’t work for some individuals… However I deeply linked with Hyde’s fantastically cinematic storytelling.
Alex’s Sundance 2025 Ranking: 8 out of 10
Observe Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing
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