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'When Did You Last See Your Father?'

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BY JOHN ANDERSON | Special to Newsday

June 6, 2008

PLOT As a father lay dying, his son reviews their life together. (PG-13)

CAST Colin Firth, Jim Broadbent, Juliet Stevenson

LENGTH 1:32

PLAYING AT At the Angelika Film Center and Cinema 1 2 3, Manhattan. At Cinema Arts Centre, Huntington, June 27.

BOTTOM LINE Artful, thoughtful weeper, well played by all of the above.

They may specialize in playing culturally conflicted Englishmen, but Colin Firth and Jim Broadbent comprise an actorly contradiction: The former seduces; the latter grabs you by the lapels. Which makes them perfect as long-suffering son and bombastic father in Anand Tucker's meditation on a long goodbye.

Blake (Firth) has never warmed to Arthur (Broadbent), who, as we see through seamlessly interwoven flashbacks, was a lifelong embarrassment. Once Arthur's death becomes imminent, however, Blake has to review the relationship that defined his life, in an assessment full of anger, regret, guilt and love.

Firth has really become a master of minimalist emotion, and Broadbent, playing the often-clueless Arthur, couldn't be better or more irritating. Director Tucker's virtuosity is in marrying Blake's memories to the present and finding they are one. Get over it, Blake's sister tells him at one point; it's a dead issue. But the motto of "When Did You Last See Your Father" could be the old William Faulkner quote: The past is never dead. It's not even past.