Late Bloomers Blu-ray Review
Old age is not for the faint of heart.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, April 14, 2013
There's a transition virtually everyone goes through at some point in their lives, where birthdays become less of a
celebration than a dreaded reminder of mortality. For some it's (the patently ridiculous) 30, for others (the somewhat
more understandable) 40, for still others (the
completely understandable) 50, while some manage to put off the
inevitable glance over their shoulder to see Death approaching until 60 or 70 or even later. It's kind of a silly fear in a
way, since we all
of course continue aging second by second, minute by minute, day by day, year by year—it's just that the delimiting
factor
of a birthday suddenly brings it all home. But at some point, most people look in the mirror, see the increasing wrinkles
and gray hair and wonder, "Where in the hell did
you come from"? (I speak from experience, believe me.) That
realization is at the core of the often charming
Late Bloomers, a 2011 feature offering William Hurt and Isabella
Rossellini as a long married couple who have unexpectedly come face to face with their aging, with each of them
reacting
in different ways to the onset of those euphemistically titled "golden years".
Late Bloomers isn't an especially
deep film, which may in fact be one of its saving graces. More or less completely devoid of either the
sturm und
drang or the more flippant quality that typically attends tales of elders,
Late Bloomers is in fact kind of like
one
of those comfortable old pairs of slippers that you continue to wear long past
their expiration date: they offer
little
glamour or allure, but they just
feel right.
There have been a number of interesting films over the past few years to feature older characters, films as disparate as
A Simple Life,
The Best Exotic Marigold
Hotel and the Dustin Hoffman directed
Quartet.
Late Bloomers shies away from the colorful characters that inhabit at least two of those
three aforementioned properties, focusing instead on a resolutely "normal" couple who are coming to terms with their
aging. The film opens with successful architect Adam (William Hurt) receiving an award while Mary (Isabella Rossellini),
his
wife of many years, waits outside the ballroom for reasons which aren't made entirely clear. When Mary awakens in
what
she perceives to be a strange hotel room the next morning and Adam has to remind her how they got there, she
instantly
fears an onset of Alzheimer's and despite her doctor's refutation of her self-diagnosis, Mary is certain that she's on a
precipitous path toward immanent decline.
Adam is not especially receptive to Mary's paranoia, but he himself is encountering his own issues as his architectural
firm has asked him to vary from his usual comfort zone of designing airports to working on a retirement home. (I
couldn't help but think of the hilarious
Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch where John Cleese plays an architect
who is used to designing slaughterhouses who is pitching a new housing complex he's come up with replete with
"rotating knives" to deal with the residents.) There's a disconnect between Adam and Mary which isn't fatal by any
means, but which points up their differing responses to what's happening. Mary sees aging as a personal affront,
getting angry at people simply because they're younger. Adam on the other hand tends to see it as a career problem.
Late Bloomers is laudable on a variety of levels, and yet it somehow tends to miss the mark as much as it finds
it. On the plus side, it's absolutely refreshing to see so many aging actors in this film, including Simon Callow as Adam's
unctuous boss and Joanna Lumley as Mary's daffy friend (you expected anything less?). Several other seniors dot the
supporting landscape, and of course Hurt and Rossellini are no spring chickens at this stage, either. But the writing
here tends to talk
at the issue rather than
about it, leaving the film feeling dissociated from its very
subject. The fact that Adam and Mary are so obviously well heeled and capable, despite Mary's insistence to the
contrary, tends to undercut the central conceit of the film.
The ironic thing about all of this is that co-writer and director Julie Gavras (daughter of Costa-Gavras) spends a lot of
time setting Mary up as a character who does not suffer condescension gladly, and yet Gavras herself adopts a rather
condescending tone toward both of her main characters as well as the audience, at least at times. Mary's petulant
refusal to even deal with young people comes off as boorish, while her ridiculous attempts to "elder-proof" her home
seem similarly over the top. And Gavras too often goes in for cheap laughs, having Lumley's character be prone to bad
driving and having Adam mistaken for a resident at a retirement home he goes to check out on a "scouting mission" of
sorts as he deals with his new assignment. This makes the film play like one of those old British sitcoms that used to
pop up on PBS years ago, like
As Time Goes By, low key efforts that might bring a smile now and then but rarely
offered laugh out loud hilarity.
Still, there's a modicum of wit and grace running through at least parts of
Late Bloomers, no more so than in the
winning performances of Hurt and Rossellini. The two actors make a very believable couple, one which has already
trundled down a long and winding road and now finds itself at a new, unexpected crossroads. Had Hurt and Rossellini
been handed a little more adroit script,
Late Bloomers could have been a high water mark in their own later
careers. As it stands, it's a kind of slight entry in both of their filmographies, enjoyable but hardly as weighty as it might
have been.
