Old couple separation: 

Two films come to mind when I consider an older woman who leaves her husband for another man. 

Innocence (2000) and Cloud9 (2009). Innocence was not distributed in UK but I still remember the fuss made by reviewers and young people  when Cloud9 was distributed in England.  It must have been a reassurance for young or not so young people that sex does not fade away with age….

Cloud 9 (2008 ): It won the award: Jury Coup de Coeur Un Certain Regard in Cannes. Except for Sight and Sound’s Tony Rains, the  majority of reviewers were effusive in their praises: “performances quietly effective, the power of love, quietly powerful film grappling with real emotions, unjudgemental, well worth your time, this is a deeply moving film, immaculately acted, rare emotional power, remarkable lead performance”.  And what surprised me is that some young women concurred with these readings…. 

I was so shocked…. that even young feminists of my acquaintance liked the story of a just over 60 years woman who leaves a caring albeit boring 70+ years old man  to have sex with a good cyclist 70+ old man. I saw the film at the London Film Festival in 2008.  I considered this a boring ageist, sexist film. 

I was comforted when  the DVD was available and I showed it to the Brent U3A film group at the Lexi Community Cinema.  The first comment was: the woman had an overdose of HRT . 

Further contributions : her husband should have pushed her under a train, not all sports are spectator sports, the sex scenes where not erotic , the sex scenes did not work, the sex scenes were certainly too long, the joke aboutsex and the 80 old couple was tasteless the sex scenes were not shocking but boring, not another sex scene, I felt like a voyeur, I kept thinking of the cameraman.,

I cannot recall another film of this genre that so divides the viewers and I can only attribute it to the general fear of ageing.

A full analysis is on June 3rd. 2010