Writer-director Sophie Hyde (Good Luck to You, Leo Grande) draws on her own life for a story of complexities that encompass all the love, resentment, and heartache of family as well as the contradictions that make for human nature and the deep truths it’s only possible to share in part, even with those closest to us.

The title character — Jimpa is a combination of “Jim” and “grandpa” — is the father of filmmaker Hannah (Olivia Colman) who, after too long a time, pays Jim (John Lithgow) a visit, traveling from Australia with her husband and their trans, non-binary sixteen-year-old, Frances (Aud Mason-Hyde), to Amsterdam, where Jim has lived for three decades. Once the family are underway, Frances announces that they have a request: They want to stay with Jim in Amsterdam for a year. It’s not that they are being bullied or necessarily feel rejected in Adelaide; it’s more, they explain, that they “don’t feel connected” to the other teens at their school, despite being out, proud, and accepted.

Jim has been openly gay since shortly after Hannah’s birth, and they way he and Hannah’s mother agreed on a co-living, co-parenting situation in which they were both free to pursue other relationships inspires Hannah’s new movie. It is, she tries to explain to others, “a drama without conflict.” Eventually, Jim relocated to Amsterdam for work and to be gay in a place with fewer biases and that, Hannah insists, was fine, too.

But it’s not quite that simple in Hannah’s actual life; Colman inhabits a character that’s quietly seething on the inside, very much in conflict with herself. As for Jim, he actively seeks conflict in the form of argument, which he finds stimulating, and his outspoken nature and talent for advocacy has carried him to a university position that is now coming to an end following a recent stroke. None of that stops the seventy-something Jim from living as enthusiastically as ever, gathering with his cadre of gay friends and cruising at sex clubs. He hides none of this, and openly speaks his mind in front of Francis and everyone else — even when what he’s thinking is dismissive of notions such as his “grand-thing” (as he affectionately, and perhaps a little passive-aggressively, calls Francis) being non-binary.

Jimpa also shares narrow-minded views about bisexuals such as Isa (Zoë Love Smith), a 19-year-old who is already in a relationship with a trans man but who pursues a fling with Francis all the same. Francis says they are open to polyamory and uses words like “comperson” with authoritative zeal, but, as with so much else in this movie, their experiences unfold with less equanimity than their declarations.

Another way in which reality collides with wishful thinking is the way Jimpa alternately relishes Francis’ desire to spend a year with him, and then brushes the suggestion off, going so far as to interview for a new job in Helsinki. This is confusing to Francis, but not as much as seeing the close friendship that soon develops between Hannah and Jim’s quite clearly queer assistant, Richard (Eamon Farren).

In short, it’s a tumultuous trip for everyone, including Hannah’s sister, Emma (Kate Box), who is less willing to let Jim end his life as he wishes in the event of another stroke than either Jim or Hannah are. Hyde keeps the film’s emotional threads from getting tangled through compassionate, layered writing and direction, but also through the device of allowing snippets of the lives of the characters to flash in front of us: We’re seeing the memories of men who lived through the AIDS crisis, as well as Hannah and Emma’s memories of growing up in a home where their father would host pool parties with handsome men and piles of snuggling, sleeping men would still be there in the morning.

These complicated recollections and conflicting feelings are bound together by an almost transcendent tenderness. Hannah sometimes verges on being a doormat, but there’s something in her nature — and Colman’s performance — that speaks to her core strengths of compassion and keen attention, starting with the movie’s opening scene, when Hannah is teaching a class about how directors connect with their actors and help actors connect with their roles. It’s a masterful shorthand that introduces us to Hannah’s own talent for intimacy, and another example of just how great Colman is in any project in which she appears. Lithgow, too, brings his A game; he’s played queer before, in films like Supernova, Love is Strange, Terms of Endearment, and — perhaps most famously — The World According to Garp. He knows exactly how to give an authentic portrayal of a gay man, and he does that here in a way that will make you (like Hannah; like Francis) love him despite his flaws and failings.

Jimpa is currently in theatrical release.

Watch the trailer: