Coming To Know a Father When It's Too Late

If ever a film was placed in the hands of the wrong director, it's "When Did You Last See Your Father?" which opens Friday. Anand Tucker, who breathed life into the poignant and underrated 2005 drama "Shopgirl," bathes his new film in the same pixie dust and pageantry that made "Shopgirl" a memorable, modern-day fairy tale. But given the nature of the Blake Morrison memoir upon which this movie is based, which is chiefly about wounded hearts and the clouded nostalgia of family (a far cry from the themes of love and life in Los Angeles in "Shopgirl"), Mr. Tucker's fairy-tale flair misses the mark by a wide margin.

The disconnect begins, oddly enough, with the film's score. As I watched a screener of the film on DVD, I found myself hitting pause on the remote several times, convinced that I had left some other music playing in my apartment. In quiet scenes of dialogue and gloomy scenes of reflection, the pulsating orchestral score, composed by the masterful Barrington Pheloung (who crafted the indelible score for "Shopgirl") routinely disrupts scenes that seem to be aiming for understatement, and decorates sequences that require no accent or punctuation. Not that it is Mr. Pheloung's fault. It was Mr. Tucker, after all, who unwisely decided to shroud this story in a mist of majesty and mystery, rendering an everyday drama as something epic.

Colin Firth stars as the dour, depressed Blake, who has returned home to grapple with the terminal illness and imminent death of his father, Arthur (Jim Broadbent). In a series of flashbacks, some jumping further into the past than others, we witness the moments in Blake's childhood that have come to define his bond with Arthur. In Blake's younger days, his father's impulsive, take-no-prisoners attitude appealed to him. But as Blake grew older and came to recognize Arthur's flaws — the way his impulsiveness belied unflappable ignorance, and how his routine road trips were excuses to spend time with women other than his wife — a rift formed between father and son and was never truly repaired.

It's easy to see, as Blake's homecoming continues, that some of Dad's problems have been passed down. Blake has a wife and a child, but during this time of family crisis, his calls home grow increasingly terse. He relives the arguments of his teenage years. Back in his hometown, he seeks out Sandra (Elaine Cassidy), the woman who once worked in his childhood home, and his first true love. He closes in around himself, repelling his loved ones and refusing to acknowledge the rage beneath his handsome veneer, just as Dad did.

The movie looks and sounds like a powerful family drama, but it doesn't feel like much of anything. Tears are shed and smiles stretch wide, hugs and homecomings and heart-to-hearts abound. But the busier the production becomes — zigzagging between the present and the past, and swathing every discussion in unexpected epiphanies (and that music) — the less the viewer has to cling to. What's perhaps most notable about "When Did You Last See Your Father?" is that it never pauses long enough to allow us to exist in a moment of Arthur and Blake's conflicted relationship. There's so much sweep to this tale that there's almost no substance.

Relying heavily on flashbacks of shorter and shorter durations, David Nicholls's screenplay gives us the photo-album version of father and son: the day Blake learned to drive on the beach, the day he almost caught Arthur cheating while on a picnic, the infamous family dinner at which a drunken Blake called Arthur out on his flaws.

While their characters are mostly scripted into caricatures, Messrs. Firth and Broadbent try mightily to imbue them with added depth. As the older incarnation of Blake, Mr. Firth has little to do but look solemn during his father's final days. But in the film's later moments, when the emotional coma finally lifts, he helps us to see the buried emotion now rising to the surface. Mr. Broadbent, meanwhile, gets to play one of those eccentric characters that most actors dreams of, turning this father into a one-man wrecking crew. He is bubbly and effervescent, even when he's being deceptive and manipulative, and it's easy to see in his wild gestures and beguiling optimism the way that a child would be enamored by his energy while an adult would be put off by his obstinacy.

S.J.S.