‘Jimpa’ Review: John Lithgow and Olivia Colman Charm in Sophie Hyde’s Personal but Distant LGBTQIA+ Centered Feature [C-] – Sundance Film Festival

Following the immensely crowd-pleasing Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, Australian filmmaker Sophie Hyde returns to Sundance Film Festival with Jimpa, an ambitious, deeply personal story based on her own family. It crams a lot of biographical details – a gay man coming out to his wife and kids, surviving the AIDS crisis, having a nonbinary grandchild, and reckoning with how much further the LGBTQIA+ political discourse has moved beyond what he fought for. Yet of all things, euthanasia ultimately surfaces as the dominant theme.
Olivia Colman plays Hannah, who in the opening scene agonizes over the prospect of putting down her cancer-stricken dog. However, this tidbit doesn’t impress as an entire metaphor until much, much later. Hannah is in the midst of prepping for a film project about the titular Jimpa, played by John Lithgow, coming out shortly after her birth and deserting the family for Amsterdam when she was a child. As Hannah discusses her project with colleagues over video conferencing, she insists there were no conflicts or hard feelings about his choices. While on the surface theirs seems exactly like the utopian family Hannah describes, she also appears to be in denial about their share of dysfunction.
Indeed, they are on very good terms, as Hannah, her partner Harry (Daniel Henshall), and teen Frances (Aug Mason-Hyde, the director’s real-life offspring), are off to pay Jimpa a visit in Amsterdam. On the jetway, Frances surprises the parents by announcing they intend to stay with Jimpa for a while. And yes, that is a whole other story.
As she juxtaposes Jimpa’s coming out with that of Frances’s, Hyde, who co-wrote the script with Matthew Cormack, is definitely onto something in her observation and depiction of the generation gap within the LGBTQIA+ community. Jimpa came up when queer people had to find their own family. His circle of friends registers as the geriatric version of cast ensembles from the 1990s’ wave of gay-themed films. Despite Jimpa having spent much of his life fighting for gay rights, he casually dismisses the existence of bisexuals and carelessly misgenders Frances, who identifies as they/them, or uses the wrong pronoun. Meanwhile, Frances has no clue what a ‘friend of Dorothy’ is.
Set in 2022, the film’s particular day and age, queer people are still in need of direction as evident in Frances’s journey. It’s a lonely, scary experience full of pitfalls and heartbreaks. Although Hannah and Harry are most accepting, they offer no real guidance and prefer to let Frances explore on their own. Perhaps in Jimpa, Frances sees someone with the wisdom to help them navigate the unknown. But just as the older men I looked to during my own coming out decades ago, Jimpa offers absolutely no help.
Hyde’s best directorial flourishes are these little snippets of flashbacks throughout. At times they look like moving slideshows – brief, to the point, yet instantly adding much context to the narrative’s present-day proceedings. There are vignettes of a decadent libertine lifestyle portrayed matter-of-factly. This is very much a way of life, but unflattering for those in the community who’ve never taken part in it. Then again, Hannah (and maybe Hyde) makes it clear that she hasn’t figured out her own apprehension toward infidelity, polygamy and other stuff society also frowns upon.
Lithgow joins the ever-growing list of cishet actors who repeatedly accept gay roles. To his credit, he is at least comfortable with frontal nudity and wearing nothing but a leather vest in a dungeon. As with Emma Thompson’s nude scenes in Leo Grande, Lithgow’s are very flattering. Colman enlivens the proceedings with the occasional deadpan. The film’s funniest moments are all thanks to her.
Jimpa is obviously quite meaningful for Hyde on a personal level, and that comes across. But as a whole, it doesn’t really gel together. The thoughtful meditation on generations of LGBTQIA+ life is unfortunately bookended by the completely unrelated euthanasia. It just seems so uncharacteristic for a person who has fought all his life – from battling with AIDS to striving for gay rights – to suddenly throw in the towel. Perhaps Hyde herself hasn’t allowed enough time to fully process her father’s death before committing it to film. Though its runtime is barely over two hours, the film feels much longer. Hyde’s candidness and commitment to warts and all deserve applause, but those are seemingly doing more for her own conscience than for the audience.
Grade: C-
This review is from the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Jimpa is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
- ‘Last Days’ Review: Sky Yang Excels in Justin Lin’s Muted Missionary Man Adventure [B-] – Sundance Film Festival - January 28, 2025
- ‘Oh, Hi!’ Review: Tie Him Up, Tie Him Down [C+] – Sundance Film Festival - January 27, 2025
- ‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’ Review: Rose Byrne is Mother in Manic Maternal Gut Punch [A-] – Sundance Film Festival - January 25, 2025