In Beginners, Los Angeles is a reflection of the lonely soul of its protagonist, Oliver (Ewan McGregor), who wanders this city of empty, echoing rooms, deserted side streets, and quite palm treed vistas. An early scene establishes director Mike Mills’ emotional inbalance. Oliver introduces his house to his dog — this is the dining room, this is the kitchen — each room less tour-worthy than the rest. Like Oliver, life has lost its luster, its distinction, its pathos. It’s too fathomless, and Oliver lives on the brink of a kind of living suicide, resigning himself to an existence filled with nothing but platitudes.

Beginners presents a world in need of a shakeup, and in the movies, those usually come in the form of a love story. Indeed, Oliver meets Anna (Melanie Laurent) a lovely French girl with whom he decides to enjoy their first night together without speaking a word. Words, language, and the personalities and histories they divulge, are the source of Oliver’s scars. His flirtatious fling proves goose-bumpy and carefree, if sputtering, an endearing romantic elixir.

But the real wakeup comes via Oliver’s father, Hal (Christopher Plummer), who simultaneously announces to his son that he a) has terminal cancer, and b) is gay. As if withstanding the blast of two existential nuclear explosions, the revelations rock Oliver’s conception of his life, his childhood, his family, and his personal history. It also sets up Hal as a proselyte of carpe diem, life-affirming energy. Oliver’s struggles to understand and accept his father’s fate go a long way to making the son more vulnerable to his own heart’s inclination. As you might have deduced from the movie’s title, Beginners is about learning how to love again.

As with his film Thumbsucker, Mike Mills shows here a masterful talent for disarming tone and an ability to wrap the trappings of a cinematic world with the distinctive characteristics of his style. The slow, melancholic pace is never brooding or lumbering, and there is a wistful loveliness to this story, like a lullaby. Still Mills’ vision feel restrained, and despite the the raw subjects he is dealing with, there is a persistent emotional distance between the film and its subjects that makes it feel like the director is reluctant to hit these life questions head on. Both McGregor and Plummer deliver appealing understated performances — sweet, like the movie, without ever devolving into saccharine.