Call For Comments: on “Old People Still ƒµ¢&!” movies

From Mav: A few weeks ago, Wayne in passing mentioned the last year’s movie Good Luck to You, Leo Grande — a film starring 63yo Emma Thompson having an affair with a 30yo Daryl McCormack. Among other things, the film is trying to present an image of elder woman who still has sexual needs and trying to flip the theoretically established Hollywood trope of placing older male actors with young female starlets. Of course, this isn’t the first of these movies. The immediate one that springs to mind with Harold and Maude where the age difference is MUCH greater(60 years) But even movies like How Stella Got Her Groove back are basically focused on “and this old woman fucks a younger man” even though the age difference is actually only a pretty reasonable 12 years there (she’s only supposed to be 40!). Still, the point of all of these films is basically “hey, did you know older women still like sex?” Just with varying degrees of “old”.

I’d argue this isn’t really new. Harold and Maude came out all the way back in 1971. And if you consider May/December romance plots with older men and younger women, then a 12 year difference like in Stella is hardly even worth mentioning in heterosexual films where the man is older. But films like Manhattan (27ish years), American Beauty(25ish years), and Lost in Translation(34ish years) all do this on one level or another. Of course in each of those films we’re arguably supposed to see the relationships as wrong or uncomfortable. That is, in a film where the man is older, if the age difference is acknowledged (and it isn’t always) then it’s SUPPOSED to be questionable… and creepy. Whereas the the female led films tend to eventually side with “and it turns out was actually alright.”

But really, it’s not always about May/December romances. I think we also have to acknowledge the mass production of films where “old” people have “age-appropriate” relationships. This also goes back quite a ways. I very much remember the Grumpy Old Men films, which pretty much had the plot “they may be 70, but they still get horny!”. Of course, much of the charm of those films was reuniting Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon who were already doing the “these old guys still want to fuck” schtick with The Odd Couple in their 40s. Then there was both On Golden Pond and Cocoon in the 1980s…. critically acclaimed and Oscar wining. And the female version of this was essentially the plot to the Golden Girls in the 80s and And Just Like That (the revival of Sex and the City) today. And yes… they are basically the same age group of 50s-60s (maybe we need to do an episode on retrospective aging). But honestly, we could go with 85yo Jane Fonda, who has been playing the role of “old lady who still likes to fuck” on screen for the last couple decades (basically seamlessly transitioning from her earlier role as a young sex symbol… including being nominated for an Oscar with On Golden Pond when she was in her 40s). She literally has like THREE FILMS this year with that character.

So really, what I’m getting at here is… why are we so obsessed with movies that have this plot? Why is it treated as though they concept that “people might have sex after the age of 35” supposed to be novel, even though we make tons of films where that’s the case? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.