Time tends
to dull memories while sharpening the emotions behind them. It's the
memoirist's duty to turn down the rosy glow of happy moments and resist the
urge to settle scores started in all those unhappy times that prompted the
memoir urge in the first place. Adapting a bestselling account of life as the
son of an eccentric father by U.K. Yorkshire-born poet and novelist Blake
Morrison, When Did You Last See Your Father? nicely balances moments of
childhood trauma with a full appreciation of the man whose enthusiasm for high
spirits sometimes came at considerable cost to those around him.
Serving
notice that his range extends beyond non-descript leading-man parts, Colin
Firth plays Morrison as an adult, first seen in 1989 on the verge of accepting
a literary award his father (Jim Broadbent, in as good of a performance as he's
ever given) can't fully appreciate since it always made more sense to him for
his son to pursue something practical. (He enjoys attending the ceremony,
however, since it means talking to the nice bearded chap who wrote The
Satanic Verses.)
First seen in flashback scamming his way into the members-only section of a
motor race, Broadbent conveys an instantly winning charm that's curdled for
those around him. They've heard all his jokes, tired of all his stock phrases,
and seen that his good-time-Charlie ways can mask a selfish streak. The family
has long run on a mix of love, frustration, and an agreement to look the other
way on some issues. But just as Firth begins to receive acclaim, Broadbent
falls ill, forcing his son to confront the past.
The film
follows, weaving flashbacks of a childhood spent with a man "lost if he
couldn't cheat in a small way" into an unflinching look at the same man's
final, bedridden days. As he did in Hillary And Jackie, director Anand Tucker (who also
directed Shopgirl)
brings a delicate touch to heavy material and an evenhanded approach to some
uneven family dynamics. While his staging can sometimes feel overly posed,
Tucker elegantly lets past and present rhyme against one another, particularly
in a long, lyrical passage covering a father-son road trip. Trouble only really
sets in as the film starts to wind down and struggles to tie all those
observations together a little too neatly. It's too true to life not to resist
an easy conclusion.