When it comes to relationships, we're all beginners.

From writer/director Mike Mills comes Beginners , a comedy/drama about how deeply funny and transformative life can be, even at its most serious moments.

Beginners imaginatively explores the hilarity, confusion, and surprises of love through the evolving consciousness of Oliver (Golden Globe Award nominee Ewan McGregor). Oliver meets the irreverent and unpredictable Anna (Mélanie Laurent of Inglourious Basterds ) only months after his father Hal Fields (Academy Award nominee Christopher Plummer) has passed away.

This new love floods Oliver with memories of his father, who, following the death of his wife of 45 years, came out of the closet at age 75 to live a full, energized, and wonderfully tumultuous gay life - which included a younger boyfriend, Andy (Goran Visnjic of ER ). The upheavals of Hal's new honesty, by turns funny and moving, brought father and son closer than they'd ever been able to be. Now Oliver endeavors to love Anna with all the bravery, humor, and hope that his father taught him.

At once deeply personal and universal, Beginners was inspired by Mike Mills' own father and is meant in turn to inspire everyone weighing their chances and choices in life and love.

Inspired by his father, writer/director Mike Mills presents Beginners, which symbolises that there is much to learn from every relationship.

That is exactly what Oliver (Ewan McGregor) is about to learn from his 75-year-old father Hal (Christopher Plummer), who comes out of the closet after his wife's demise. Declaring to his son upfront that he is gay, Hal puts behind his 45 years of marriage and begins to live an amazingly unrestrained life. One day, he is struck down with cancer but that too fails to put a halt to Hal's lifestyle and his relationship with the younger Andy (Goran Visnjic).

Oliver narrates this story of love and life. Its non-linear method of presenting the plot constantly transports viewers to and fro, between the time of Hal's gay declaration and his death. Concurrently, the present-day story of Oliver emerges. He meets Anna (Mélanie Laurent) at a Halloween party. She is suffering from laryngitis, so she communicates with Oliver by writing notes. In one of such notes, she asks him why he is at a party when he is not happy.

The wonderfully crafted storyline and editing complements the talented cast. Ewan McGregor enables the audience to feel a sense of loss but yet harbouring a tinge of hope. Essentially, the gay element take a backseat as the true meaning of love and happiness is uncovered. Most of the humour comes from the subtitled thoughts of Arthur, Hal's Jack Russell terrier that Oliver adopts.

Love and life can be learned from the relationship of others. These themes transcend the homosexual undertones of this movie.