LATE BLOOMERS

Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number

Directed by Julie Gavras
Starring William Hurt, Isabella Rossellini, Joanna Lumley

Late Bloomers is a film which attempts to explore the trials and tribulations of growing older. Isabella Rossellini and William Hurt play Italian-born housewife Mary and architect Adam, a married couple who are pulled apart by a fear of aging, and the film explores how each reacts to the inevitable reality that they’re growing old.

After Mary experiences an incident of memory loss, it forces her to re-assess her life. She tries (and fails) to keep up in an aqua aerobics class, attempts to take up charity work with a condescending boss, and she tries to make herself desirable to the opposite sex and only attracts Peter (Hugo Speer), the owner of the swimming pool where she exercises. Unfortunately, her efforts go mainly unnoticed by Adam, who is too preoccupied with taking on projects that will get him closer to a young, attractive associate (Arta Dobroshi).

While Mary wants to take every precaution to enable an easy life for when she and her husband are officially considered elderly, Adam is reluctant to admit that he’s growing old at all. When Mary buys a telephone “for old people” and a posturepedic adjustable bed, Adam retaliates by spending more time with his much younger colleagues, trying to recapture the glory days of his youth. “You don’t just want to work,” Mary says in frustration. “You want to work with your junior architects so you feel younger.”

“Well, I don’t know if they’re making me younger,” Adam retaliates, “But you’re making me older.”

Eventually things get to the point where the couple barely know each other anymore and their three children feel like they have to scheme to get them back together. But with their parents turning into two very different people in front of their eyes, do their parents even want to get back together anymore?

Ultimately, while it is wonderful to watch Hurt and Rossellini onscreen, the film is slow-moving and is targeted towards quite a niche audience. It’s very hard to get into if you’re a 22-year-old reviewer with no real worries about growing elderly anytime soon.

However, even when sharing the screen with two acting greats such as these, the supporting cast shine particularly brightly - especially Simon Callow and Joanna Lumley. Lumley in particular is a standout in her role as a ‘Grey Panther’, a social rights activist who wishes she’d put the same amount of effort into her marriage.

She also makes possible the most poignant point of the movie when she tells a group of peers, “We have wisdom and experience, but we have no role models. How are women between 60 and 80 meant to behave? There’s no recognition.”

While the film might not exactly answer that question, it certainly does draw to attention that this is one of very few films being made for an exclusively older audience. Unfortunately, with its slow-moving plot, sloppily written dialogue and not a whole lot of action, it shows exactly why there aren’t many films being made for the 60 to 80 year old age group.

_TARA LLOYD