Movie confronts last frontier of feminism
January 16, 2010
Women are lucky to have Meryl Streep on the silver screen. It's not that there aren't great-looking, vibrant, sexy 60-year-old women around us in real life. But until now, there haven't been any in movies.
There have been character actors with great bone structure but not a gorgeous leading lady with uncorrected wrinkles and sags jumping in and out of bed, with two men pursuing her, as happens to Streep in her latest movie, It's Complicated.
This is feminism's final gift to women: in 2010, as the baby boomers begin to backpedal into old age, a 60-year-old female can - shock horror! - be sexually desirable on screen. But there's a dark side to this newfound appeal.
Directed by boomer rom-com specialist Nancy Meyers, 60, It's Complicated features Jane (Streep) and Jake (side-splittingly funny Alec Baldwin) who get back together 10 years after their divorce and have a steamy affair.
Jake is now married to his former mistress, Agness, a 30-something bitch with rock hard abs.
The marriage isn't turning out well - she's a high-powered executive with a bratty young son (the product of a fling) and a ticking body clock, who drags Jake to a fertility clinic because his sperm count is low.
Jane's girlfriends tell her not to feel guilty about the affair because "you had him first".
Meanwhile, Adam (played by Steve Martin), the milquetoast architect designing her house extension, has a crush on her. On one date he tells her: "Your age is one of my favourite things about you.'' Cue swoon from the post-menopausal set.
A scene in which Jane drops her dressing gown and stands naked in front of an admiring Jake is affirmation from Hollywood that the age barrier for women is finally down. One of Miranda's patented "big calls". Even the snarkiest reviewers don't take that achievement away from Meyers.
Jane looks aged, close up, but about as nicely as is humanly possible. She toys with the idea of erasing those sags and creases, staving off reality for a few more years. But she retains her integrity, running hyperventilating out of a plastic surgeon's office.
As for Baldwin's Jake, for all his big hairy belly and boozy cheeks, he still has pulsating, alpha male sex appeal. I don't think it's only Streep who is "turned on" at this stage
All Steve Martin's Adam can raise is a gasp of sympathy from the audience when he has to offload tickets bought for a hoped-for first date with Jane.
The irony is that, despite feminism's advances, while nice Adam is the man women say they want, Jake the rake has always been the one that they really want - the sexy, hulking bad boy with icy blue eyes and a menacing manner towards rivals. So, the feminist movement is repudiated with one film? Wow.
In the same way that men are hardwired to lust after a young pair of ovaries, women are instinctively drawn towards alphas. Are all women drawn to them? Miranda clearly is - considering her professed adoration of Tony "Ferret Chest Hair" Abbott. But, other women, discuss...
And when Jake falls for Jane again, you can almost hear the rejoicing of all the divorcees who were thrown over for sports models.
It's revenge fantasy for the First Wives Club, as Agness's hauteur towards the ex-wife turns to the wounded realisation that Jake still loves the old bag.
Of course, reality intrudes when you note who the 51-year-old Baldwin brought to the New York premiere of It's Complicated - Nicole Seidel, 27. Even Steve Martin, 61, is on to his second wife, Anne Stringfield, almost 25 years his junior. Which somehow repudiates what you have said about older women only a few paragraphs back
But art often presages reality. (Oh, so this is art and you are covering up the contradiction with a bit of soothsaying. Oooh, you mystic!)
As the baby boomers age, the world continues to revolve around them, paving the path for those behind. They will continue to break taboos, smash glass ceilings and shatter old stereotypes - those that are left, that is. Age is the last frontier.
Feminism has lately been preoccupied with such trivial pursuits as trying to convince the world that fat is good, with magazines making tokenistic efforts to embrace "plus-size" models who pose naked with a little stomach paunch dangling down.
Lard seems to have become a populist cause for feminism, but not age, which renders women invisible. What a load of shit. Where is the evidence? Mainstream films??? I can imagine, as well, your attitude towards women with that "paunch".
As they have grown older, even the feistiest feminists have grown quieter. Old ladies are still marginalised as appendages of their husbands and old widows disappear from sight. No one wants to know. Who is "no-one"? Clearly Miranda belongs to the "I'm everyone and what I say is the only right thing to say" school of which she and Andrew Bolt belong.
So women hurtling into old age do their best to pretend they're not. The revolution of Botox is to women what Viagra is to men, which shows you where the priorities of each sex lie - one to look good to have sex and one to have good sex. Sixty is the new 40. Huh???
The sight of older women with younger men barely raises an eyebrow. It's the age of the cougar, from Jackie Collins and Ivana Trump to Kim Cattrall and Demi Moore. Weren't you extolling the wonders of Meryl's character not going the botox a while ago? And is it the "age of the cougar"? Really?
But the dark side of emancipation from ageism is that women have more scope to get up to the sort of mischief and wreak the emotional damage that was once the province of men. Hello Mrs Robinson. Not sure where The Graduate belongs in a discussion of contemporary film, but there you go.
Marriage may take even more of a battering as women are tempted to go after young trophy men to affirm their enduring desirability.
If there's one thing Meyers achieves in her film, it's the palpable sense of divorce's needless toll. Jane and Jake's adult daughter, Gabby, admits: "I am very damaged from the divorce."
And then there is the longing and regret that is in Jake's eyes when he sees Jane and their three grown-up children gathered around her table for a convivial family meal.
It may only be fair that men get a taste of their own medicine, but the establishment of a bitter First Husbands Club is not exactly a step forward for humanity.
Hey, have you seen "It's Complicated" ? I want to see it but I would rather hear someone else's view first cause the ratings weren't that great and apparantly the only thing saving it is the one and only, Meryl Streep, what a fine acress she is!
