INNOCENCE
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Fireworks Pictures/Cinemavault Releasing Director: Paul Cox Writer: Paul Cox Cast: Julia Blake, Charles Tingwell, Terry Norris, Kristien Van Pellicom, Robert Menzies, Marta Dusseldorp
At age thirty, more cells perish than get reborn, or so the biologists say. Luckily, though, passion does not have to die, though you'd work hard to convince some people of that. So if at age 60, 70, 80 and beyond you head for the sexual exits, you'd be guilty of premature evacuation. How do we know? Paul Cox tells us so, in fact he doesn't tell us, he shows us and oh, my, how well he does this in his signature restrained manner. In his film "Innocence," he deals with a love between a man and woman each about 70 years of age--not a paternal or avuncular kind of love, not the so-called deep and platonic type, but real, adolescent-style hunger and fulfillment. Since the chances are good that most of us will reach the age of 70--which, however unappealing this may be to some of us sure beats the alternative- -"Innocence" speaks to us all. We're curious. What's sex going to be like then?
That's not all. "Innocence" is inviting as well because, admit it: you're wondering about your first love, and maybe your second or third as well. How is they doing now? Happily married? Miserable and single? Creative and celebrated or nonentities and invisible? Even now in the Internet age, I'll bet most of us know nothing about the people we dated ten, twenty, thirty years ago but the memories persist and we're downright curious, aren't we?
Andreas (Charles Tingwell), a 69-year-old living in Adelaide, South Australia, sure is. He has a grown, caring daughter, but his wife died at an early age leaving him a lonely man who learns that the woman with him he had a passionate affair fifty years ago in Belgium is now living in the same city as he. He writes her a letter and she, Claire (Julia Blake), agrees to meet him although she is living with her husband of many decades, John (Terry Norris). When they meet, do they go for tea and quietly chat about the good old days? They do that, but more important they realize that the spark has not died and that during the November of their lives they embark on an affair as though they were still twenty years old in postwar Antwerp. Deciding she is too old to lie, she tells all to her husband, accusing him of paying little attention to her and for (get this) not making love even once in the last twenty years. (Sounds like the fantasy that sons and daughters have of their aging parents.)
"Innocence" deals with the reaction that the people have to the relationship of these two, well, sexagenarians. How does John react? What does Andreas's long-term housekeeper do when she runs into her employer just as he and his woman friend come down their stairs in their robes? "Innocence" is that rare movie that is about something different, something scarcely tackled in the same way by the film industry, mostly ignored by Hollywood whose idea of romantic sixty-ish people stretches all the way from Robert Redford to Warren Beatty. Most of us will probably empathize with Claire, a woman whose marriage has dried up and who realizes that love becomes that much deeper when there are not many years left. I'm not so sure I'd go along with her view about being "too old to lie." What's that supposed to mean? I'm thinking of the meanspirited lovers in Jean-Charles Tacchella's 1975 movie "Cousin, Cousine," in which the characters played by Marie-Christine Barrault and Victor Lanoux, married to others, decide to go beyond the kissing stage but do so right in the home of the husband.
The way Paul Cox stimulates our thinking about this and other matters is part of what makes this a resourceful film, one which racked up prizes at film festivals all over the place--Taormina, Toronto, Vlissengen, Montreal, Saint-Tropez among other locations. I don't think I'd go as far as my online colleague in Australia, Andrew Howe, who in reviewing the movie on December 13, 2000 called it "without reservation...a wonderful film...leavened with warmth, compassion..." even quipping that this film will change your life. But it deserves an A for sincerity, for a refusal to sell out to Hollywood's affinity for young, bosomy and large-lipped women. Its performances are all as authentic as any director would want them to be. Tony Clark does a fine job behind the lens capturing flashbacks to the salad days of the principals, proving what Tim Burton ("Planet of the Apes") knew all along. Time travel is possible: you can be twenty once again.
Not Rated. Running time: 94 minutes. (C) 2001 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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