How many films have you seen about fifty something men recharging their lives and their libidos by having affairs with younger women? Lots - even if you discount Woody Allen. This film turns the lost searchings of older men and women on their head - Jim Broadbent is entirely convincing as Nick, the self defined under achieving husband of Lindsay Duncan's Meg, a teacher who is also looking for a new direction. Hanef Kureshi's script is sharp, humorously incisive, bitter-sweet romantic comedy which holds on to both the comedy and the romance without ever getting cloying, but still managing to take the romance and turn it upside down and shake it a little.
Every long term couple will recognise the exchanges - " Have you got the Euro's", "Yes I Have" "Where are they then?". What makes this film stand out is that is the way it builds up a such a coherent picture of a couple who stayed with the feminist concept of having a supportive male in a relationship,and Nickdisplays the agony of someone who's been that husband, but now finds that he has been metaphorically debollocked, he feels powerless and nowhere more hurtfully than in the scenes where he begs for sex, but she really isn't interested - they lost the spark. She tells him he is just a dependent. There's plenty going on though in their 30th anniversary trip to Paris - you never lose interest - and it isn't all bad.
The plot development where they meet the smarmy, confident and very successful academic, Morgan, played by Jeff Goldblum pitches up against all those films where... well, lets just say that Morgan has ditched his (second) wife and married a younger woman who adores him - say no more, is very powerfully done. The dinner party they go to brings all the good and bad in their relationship to a head. It's a great climax, thoughtful and affecting, to a thoughtful and affecting film.
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