{"id":959165,"date":"2026-05-14T11:35:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T11:35:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/959165\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T11:35:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T11:35:16","slug":"oh-my-god-did-my-dad-and-i-fight-olivia-colman-on-triggers-trans-rights-and-sexual-regret-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/959165\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Oh my God, did my dad and I fight\u2019: Olivia Colman on triggers, trans rights and sexual regret | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Jimpa, Olivia Colman<\/a> plays a woman called Hannah who leaves Adelaide with her husband and 16-year-old child to visit her father in Amsterdam. This is Jimpa \u2013 the word sticks better once you know it\u2019s a compound of Jim and grandpa. At the airport, the teenager, Frances, who\u2019s trans, drops a bombshell: they want to move to the Netherlands and finish their schooling there. Hannah and her husband, Harry, respond thoughtfully, not freaking out.<\/p>\n

But once they arrive in Amsterdam, Jimpa, played by John Lithgow<\/a>, brings enough drama for everyone \u2013 something he\u2019s been doing for 40 years, since he left his family for a fuller queer life than Australia at the end of the 20th century could offer. The film revels in revealing the sort of lifestyle he enjoyed instead.<\/p>\n

double quotation mark<\/p>\n

Some scenes made me wish I\u2019d been able to be calmer with my dad when he said something inflammatory<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cWhen I first met John,\u201d says director Sophie Hyde, \u201che said, \u2018Jimpa has to be naked!\u2019 He was so sure about that.\u201d And Lithgow, now 80, is exactly that in the film \u2013 although often just because he likes to model for life drawing.<\/p>\n

Hannah is a film-maker trying to sell an autobiographical feature idea: what if there were two parents in the 80s \u2013 the dad comes out as gay, but the couple remain happily together as platonic co-parents, and even when the father leaves the country, there is no conflict? We see her on Zoom calls, producers asking: \u201cWhere the hell would be the drama in that?\u201d, juxtaposed against exactly that family history played out on the screen. It\u2019s funny in a bone-deep, unshowy way.<\/p>\n

Very pertinent questions \u2026 Lithgow and Aud Mason-Hyde in Jimpa. Photograph: TCD\/Prod.DB\/Alamy<\/p>\n

And, well, where is the drama in all this familial love? Hyde ponders the question. \u201cCan we ask our characters to respond with loving kindness, when usually our instinct is instant conflict? How do we lovingly disagree with each other? How do we not repress ourselves and yet not fight with each other? I think it\u2019s a very pertinent question right now.\u201d It\u2019s one of the things that makes the film so lingering, that all its topline topics \u2013 intergenerational queerness, filial disappointment, fabulous septuagenarians who refuse to grow up \u2013 are in dialogue with the wider question: has the world lost its ability to conciliate, or just its inclination?<\/p>\n

Colman is speaking over video chat from LA, Hyde is dialling in from Adelaide. Next to her is her own child, Aud Mason-Hyde, who plays Frances in the film. \u201cI spent my 19th birthday on this set,\u201d they say, \u201chaving a fake argument with my fake mum, directed by my real mum, and the dynamics of the whole thing, when you zoom out, make you think, \u2018What are we doing?\u2019\u201d Their character isn\u2019t identical to Frances\u2019s, though. \u201cI\u2019m quite outspoken and opinionated, and they are opinionated but in a much more observant way. I had to exercise a lot of restraint.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frances and Jimpa have an intensely affectionate relationship, but there\u2019s a lot of indulgent keeping-the-peace, all of it travelling in one direction, from young to old. In that sense, says Mason-Hyde, it\u2019s pretty on the nose. \u201cIn an immensely magnified way, to be a young trans person, you are constantly asked to belittle your needs and wants for the sake of being palatable and agreeable, being one of the easy trans people to get along with. Not to ask too much of others, whether that\u2019s about language or being political or being unconventional. Other people\u2019s reactions to you \u2013 their feelings and the way they express them \u2013 can be quite hateful or violent, but it\u2019s somehow the responsibility of young trans people to soothe everyone. Which makes no sense at all.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Colman also found in the film a sharp parallel, as she lost her father not long before shooting started. \u201cMy dad and I, in real life, fought a lot. We adored each other, but oh my God, did we fight, and I don\u2019t really fight with anybody else. I learned a lot from pretending to be someone else, from being with Sophie\/Hannah, just to listen and shut up. I liked being that nicer person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lithgow \u2013 with whom Colman previously worked on The Crown, he as Churchill, she as the queen \u2013 reminded her frequently of her own father. \u201cThere were moments when a scene would make me wish I\u2019d been able to be calmer with my dad when he would say something inflammatory. I think he would have loved this film. He\u2019d have sat and cried all the way through it and probably also gone, \u2018Damn it, I wish I\u2019d done it in a different way.\u2019\u201d That must have been hard. Colman responds with droll pragmatism: \u201cFrom an acting point of view, I could use it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hyde\u2019s last film was 2022\u2019s Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, in which Emma Thompson has a compelling sexual awakening courtesy of a younger sex worker, played by Daryl McCormack. In Jimpa, each character (save for Harry) has a sexual encounter that completely changes them. \u201cIt didn\u2019t feel like that was a huge choice,\u201d Hyde says. \u201cI was just showing something I see all the time in other humans, and rejecting assumptions we make about people based on their age.<\/p>\n

Awakenings \u2026 Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack in Sophie Hyde\u2019s Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. Photograph: Nick Wall\/AP<\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely didn\u2019t want Jim to not have a sexuality about him because he was older. I didn\u2019t want him to become somebody who talked about gayness as a theory. I wanted him to be a virile human being.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frances arrives in Amsterdam \u201cintellectualising the right way to be in the world, what it means to be queer, what it means to be non-binary, what it means to get consent, what polyamory means\u201d \u2013 but with no lived experience. When they have sex with a slightly older girl, even though it\u2019s awkward and utterly unlike the teenage sex typically delivered on screen, it\u2019s groundbreaking to watch them \u201cdecide to actually be vulnerable with someone else\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Hannah, whose marriage is sort-of open, has a thing with her father\u2019s amanuensis, an insanely hot, bi, younger man. Her sexual complexity is taken so seriously, while depicted so lightly, that I wonder if that\u2019s what appealed to Colman about the role. \u201cNo,\u201d she says firmly. \u201cI really liked the script. I liked these characters, I liked the story. Then I met Sophie and I really liked Sophie.\u201d<\/p>\n

We see Jim, too, have a casual encounter with calamitous consequences. \u201cI remember being in the edit suite,\u201d says Hyde, \u201cand thinking, \u2018God, I hope this doesn\u2019t read to anyone like a moral message \u2013 he goes for a blowjob, now he\u2019s having a stroke.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018I was arguing with my fake mum while being directed by my real mum\u2019 \u2026 Aud Mason-Hyde who plays Frances, with their mother Sophie Hyde who directed. Photograph: Jay L Clendenin\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Her child interjects. \u201cWe had a screening today here in Adelaide,\u201d says Mason-Hyde, \u201cand someone in the audience made a passing comment after the film \u2013 \u2018The kind of sex people have is the least interesting thing about them.\u2019 I\u2019ve been thinking about it all day because I just really feel that our sensibility \u2013 Sophie\u2019s sensibility as a film-maker \u2013 is a very queer one: through a queer lens, the sex we have is instrumental to who we are. The way that we do it, and whether we\u2019re having it, is such a huge part of who all of us are. It\u2019s so informative to our dynamics, a dialogue between people that is really embodied and therefore very queer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colman defends the audience member, saying they probably intended the comment \u201cas a kind thing. But then you think there are people who are having sex they don\u2019t want to be having. There are people lying about the sex they\u2019re having. There are people loving the sex they\u2019re having, which is changing them, in important ways. Hannah, I think, is very happy with her decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critical response to the film has focused on that question: is it possible to make a no-conflict drama? Colman just responds by calling the characters \u201can advanced level family, they\u2019ve worked shit out that other families will never sort out\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Mason-Hyde says: \u201cOh, just me being here seems to merit backlash, you know. The basics of who you are, and whether you deserve to be there in the first place, is being debated. It\u2019s awful and dehumanising and a real disservice to art and the complexity of humans.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Colman? She never reads reviews, she says. \u201cI\u2019m not very thick-skinned and I don\u2019t want to know. I just thought it was a beautiful story about kind people and who the fuck would have a problem with that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jimpa is on digital platforms in the UK, Australia and the US now.<\/p>\n

This article was amended on 14 May 2026 to correct Aud Mason-Hyde\u2019s pronouns in a picture caption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Jimpa, Olivia Colman plays a woman called Hannah who leaves Adelaide with her husband and 16-year-old child…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":959166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-959165","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116572730550972868","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=959165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/959166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=959165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=959165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=959165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}