And When Did You Last See Your Father?

The bad sound and lines of mumbled, marble-mouthed, English-accented dialogue are distracting.  Yet "And When Did You Last See Your Father" overcomes this handicap for the most part and presents an entertaining and occasionally poignant little film experience.  Despite its subject - the last days of a father dying of cancer and a son trying to reconcile his conflicting emotions - the movie succeeds by injecting a sense of life and humour through a series of flashbacks, and by keeping the maudlin to a minimum.

Jim Broadbent and Juliet Stevenson, as the dying father and suffering mother, provide excellent performances that span a few decades in elapsed time.  Colin Firth plays the adult son with a touch too much repressed emotion and old English anguish - especially in contrast to the larger than life personality of his supposedly philandering father.  There is also a sister - but her role verges on insignificant - one hopes that this editing didn't cause another family rift.  Hopefully, in the original memoir, the sister is actually part of the family.

The viewer never does discover a straightforward answer to one of the central questions of the movie - did the father have an ongoing affair with the boy's 'auntie - though there is a strong hint...

The answer to the 'secret' was not terribly important.  The family had its crises and its secrets, but managed to struggle through and keep itself intact.  Of course, this is a resolution the son can only attain in retrospect.