Embrace it and ‘Beginners’ feels warm

Mike Mills’ “Beginners,” which will be playing for another week at AMC, is one of those small, art films that is as carefully crafted as a bit of Chihuly glass . Some viewers might find it just as cold to the touch, too.

It tells the story of Oliver (Ewan McGregor), a graphic artist of middling talent but active imagination who is in recovery. His predicament? For one thing, his father (Christopher Plummer) has died just months before. For another, he’s still processing the fact that his father, at age 75 and just three years before his death, had announced that he was gay.

Of course, the fact is that Oliver has been processing his father’s sexual orientation his entire life. For even though his father and mother (Mary Page Keller) had enjoyed a loving relationship, there wasn’t much passion in view. Not, at least, in Oliver’s view. Dad, a museum curator, was gone a lot, and what Mills gives us in his absence is a succession of scenes featuring Oliver following mom a lot like Dad’s dog Arthur (a Jack Russell Terrier called Cosmo) will follow Oliver after Dad’s death. In fact, young Oliver adpots pretty much the same kind of facial expression — a bit confused, but curious (though Oliver adds in a fair share of despondency).

Going back and forth in time, Mills visits all the seemingly important moments of Oliver’s life, none more so than the party he is convince to attend where, dressed as (cute alert) Sigmund Freud, he meets Anna (Melanie Laurent), the cutest French actress west of Audrey Tautou . There’s an instant, if delicate, connection between the two. But it happens.

And so we have all the elements to tell Oliver’s tale — and to care about whether he will be able to break with his past, marked as it is with his habit of feeling hopeless about relationships, and find true love. Or, at least, the ability to let himself believe in love instead of just letting love pass him by.

Mills, as I’ve said, is a skilled filmmaker. What would have felt all-too-precious in other hands — the use of the dog, the quick-cut visual references that ground the film in specific time and place, the occasional subtitles, the overview of U.S. gay-lesbian history — is effective in his. The  stylisms work, I suspect, because Mills is serious in what he wants to say. He isn’t just being cute.

The coldness, too, may be one of perception. Even for me, who likes and admires “Beginners,” the film felt at times a bit long. That, combined with Oliver’s darkish disposition, is a difficult blend. Slow is one thing. Darkish is another. Slow and darkish can equal long (even if the actual length is a perfectly normal 105 minutes).

Still, I would recommend “Beginners.” The three leads are good, and McGregor and Laurent make such a great-looking couple that it’s nearly criminal. And Mills could teach a lot of more well-known filmmakers a thing or two about visual storytelling.

Just be ready to embrace a bit of chill. That preparation should help you feel the film’s essential warmth.

Below : The trailer for “Beginners.”