And When Did You Last See Your Father? by Oliver Thompson

"You can always tell a Yorkshireman," the saying goes, "but you can't tell him much." Blake Morrison, author of the memoir on which this new British film is based, would probably agree. He was raised by a stubborn, over-bearing Yorkshire doctor who regarded his son's love of books with suspicion and told him that real men didn't cry. When his father died, Morrison both cried and wrote a book about trying to live with him and trying to come to terms with his death.

That memoir - And When Did You Last See Your Father? - has finally made it on to film, fourteen years after it was published and initially optioned. Early attempts to make a TV adaptation of the book floundered because of the unexceptional nature of the material. Though a hugely respected writer, Morrison is not a literary superstar. His upbringing, while it contained secrets and strife, was not outstandingly dramatic, brutal or shocking. That, he wrote recently in The Guardian, made it apparently unsuitable for film: "The BBC turned the project down: man dies, son grieves - where was the story?"

As this triumphant adaptation shows, screenwriter David Nicholls and director Anand Tucker knew exactly where the story was. It was in the ordinary, the everyday, the fractious interplay of family life their film so compassionately explores. At its core lies the relationship between the bookish, tentative Blake and his boorish, obstinate father. The film’s refreshing refusal to bracket characters as heroes or villains, the willingness instead to treat them all as people - both capable and flawed – is integral to its charm. The result is a funny, poignant and frequently moving portrait of how death makes us reassess life.

And it would be hard not to be moved by the performances on show. Matthew Beard's teenage Blake, all adolescent awkwardness and pretension, is fantastic. Colin Firth's adult Blake is equally affecting as he faces up to the fact that while his father isn't perfect, nor is he. But it is testament to the performances from the entire cast - including Juliet Stevenson as Blake's mother and Gina McKee as his wife - that the film is not dominated entirely by Jim Broadbent. His captivating portrayal of Blake’s father; belligerent and devoid of empathy through his life, then suddenly cut down by the illness that would end it, is sublime.