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I once recommended that my parents see Venus, the (I thought) rather terrific octogenarian-teenager romance starring the great, highly decrepit Peter O'Toole, very much in top form in spite of his age. Had that spectre of maturity not frightened the wits out of my poor folks, I might also recommend Another Year to them, which is in every regard a lovely film, and quite terrifying in its bracing acceptance of the genial pleasures of being old.

It wouldn't be so bad, being these two. Tom and Gerri (yes, Tom and Gerri) are the circumspect centres of this film; they are the axle of their particular wheel, as it were. They do not appear to be moving much, even as all around them rotate. Tom is played by Jim Broadbent, and here I have found another hero for my own old age. Gerri is played by Ruth Sheen, along with all of her teeth, and I simply adore the way she directs conversation, and makes her feelings known, without ever seeming to apply even the slightest force.

What a patient film this is, which is not to say it is slow; it is vivid and quick, just about microscopic things. We pass through four seasons in a year in Tom and Gerri's life, as friends visit and dinners are eaten. Tom and Gerri remain placid and wry, while the supporting cast reveals volumes about their own foibles in the noise they make. Gerri's best friend Mary is the world's most shameless flirt, and suffers an excruciating slow-motion social train crash when she realizes her true place in a younger man's life. Tom's friend Ken is scarcely ever seen without food, a drink, or a cigarette in his hand, and he consumes them speedily, nearly desperately. Tom and Gerri's son, Joe, looks like his father, but keeps his secrets, and nearly startles his parents out of their hair when he magically conjures a girlfriend from behind the pantry door.

Through it all, Tom and Gerri tend to their garden, see their way around crises both major and small, and keep a good home, which reminded me to be less peevish the next time someone drops by unannounced. It's not such a bad thing to have a welcoming front door. "We'll be part of history soon," Gerri tells Tom; "Exactly," he replies. They're the lucky ones. Another Year holds a compassionate magnifying glass to generally trivial human eccentricities. We are all uniquely flawed, and those flaws can be made so comfortingly unimportant.

The film opens, and ends, on terribly distressed women, who we hope are not permanently broken. The ingredients seem there, if distant, for both of them. Towards the end of the film, too, we meet Tom's brother, Ronnie, played with ghostly quiet by David Bradley. He suffers a great loss, and says very little throughout. The last shot of him, though, sees a Mona Lisa smile playing at the corners of his lips. Did he figure it out?