Olivia Colman and John Lithgow Lead a Tender Family Drama That Quietly Unravels Decades of Love, Resentment and Secrets

Olivia Colman and John Lithgow don’t need explosive twists or manufactured tragedy to make this family story hurt. At its heart is something far more recognizable: a daughter who has spent years believing one version of her childhood, a father who remembers things differently, and a teenager whose unexpected decision forces both generations to confront everything they’ve avoided.

Jimpa, directed by Sophie Hyde, is a warm, deeply personal comedy-drama about identity, forgiveness and the complicated stories families construct around their past.

Rather than treating those themes as ingredients for relentless misery, Hyde surrounds them with humor, affection and the messy contradictions of people who can love each other deeply while still causing each other pain.

One Trip to Amsterdam Changes the Family Dynamic

Colman plays Hannah, an Australian filmmaker who travels to Amsterdam with her husband and their non-binary teenager, Frances, played by Aud Mason-Hyde.

Waiting for them is Hannah’s father Jim — or “Jimpa” — played by John Lithgow.

Jim is charismatic, unconventional and proudly free-spirited.

Decades earlier, he came out as gay and left his family behind to pursue a radically different life in Europe.

Time has passed, but Hannah hasn’t entirely escaped the emotional consequences of that decision.

The family visit therefore arrives carrying years of unresolved history beneath its surface.

And Frances soon complicates everything.

Frances Makes an Unexpected Decision

After connecting with their grandfather and the world surrounding him, Frances expresses a desire to remain in Amsterdam for a year.

For Hannah, the prospect isn’t simply about allowing her teenager greater independence.

It means watching Frances become fascinated by the same father whose choices helped shape some of Hannah’s deepest childhood resentments.

Suddenly, the version of Jim she has carried for decades is being challenged by someone from the next generation.

That creates the film’s most interesting tension.

Who gets to define a family’s history?

Can somebody have been an inadequate parent while still becoming a meaningful grandparent?

And what happens when the story you’ve told yourself about another person is no longer the only version that matters?

Olivia Colman Brings Vulnerability to Hannah

Colman’s gift for moving between comedy and emotional vulnerability makes her particularly suited to Hannah.

Her character isn’t presented simply as the wounded daughter, nor is Jim reduced to the selfish parent responsible for everything that went wrong.

Instead, Hannah is forced to examine her own assumptions while confronting feelings that have never completely disappeared.

Lithgow provides an effective counterweight.

His Jimpa possesses warmth, magnetism and a bohemian confidence that helps explain why Frances is drawn toward him.

Yet his charm doesn’t automatically erase the consequences of his past.

The film allows those conflicting truths to exist together.

The Story Has Deeply Personal Roots

That emotional complexity comes from material close to director Sophie Hyde’s own life.

Hyde drew on her family history, including her experience of her father coming out as gay when she was young.

The connection becomes even more personal through the casting of Hyde’s non-binary child, Aud Mason-Hyde, as Frances.

Rather than approaching its multi-generational LGBTQ+ family solely as an issue to be explained, the film places those identities inside an ordinary network of parental anxieties, old grudges, humor, affection and changing relationships.

Frances isn’t merely caught between Hannah and Jimpa.

Their presence forces two generations to reconsider how they understand each other.

A Family Drama That Chooses Warmth Over Melodrama

Jimpa could easily have become overwhelmingly heavy.

Its foundations include parental abandonment, unresolved resentment, identity and the painful gap between how parents remember their choices and how children experience them.

Hyde takes a gentler route.

Humor and the Amsterdam setting provide breathing room, while the film’s emotional weight comes from conversations and shifting relationships rather than constant dramatic confrontation.

Nobody needs to emerge as the obvious villain.

Nobody possesses the entire truth.

That ambiguity gives the story much of its sincerity.

Families Rarely Have Just One Version of the Past

Ultimately, Jimpa is less interested in delivering a devastating emotional twist than examining something quieter.

Parents make choices they can justify to themselves.

Children live with consequences their parents may never fully understand.

And grandchildren can encounter those same people without carrying decades of accumulated hurt.

Hannah, Jimpa and Frances therefore aren’t simply three characters representing three generations.

They represent three different ways of seeing the same family.

With Olivia Colman bringing wounded warmth, John Lithgow embracing Jimpa’s liberated spirit and Aud Mason-Hyde standing between two generations, Jimpa finds its power in an uncomfortable truth: loving someone doesn’t guarantee you’ll remember the past the same way — and forgiveness may begin only when a family finally allows more than one version of its story to exist.