Movie Review: 45 Years

Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling in 45 Years.

It is conventional wisdom in the American movie industry that the primary multiplex audience is 15 to 25 year old males.

The regular output of directors like Michael Bay seems to confirm this contention.

Nevertheless, New Zealand also has a thriving art house/independent cinema audience, which contributes more than 20 per cent to the annual box office. Andrew Haigh's 45 Years is very much a film for this audience.

This is a mature film for mature film-goers. It offers an outwardly simple but inwardly complex story about aging, marriage, honesty, loyalty - and how a ghost from the past can disturb and disrupt the placid surface of orderly lives.

It might be construed as a spoiler to describe the nature of this ghost but it involves a long-lost first love.

A surprising letter from Germany brings news for childless couple Geoff (Courtenay) and Kate Mercer (Rampling) , who are organising a celebration with friends, to acknowledge their four-and-a-half decades of marriage.

They live in rural Norfolk and the surrounding countryside is both background and a commentary on their life in retirement, which is closely examined over the space of a week.

The seasonal changes are a little uneven as sometimes it looks like mid-winter and sometimes like spring. But this is a minor flaw, for richest meaning emerges from conversation and silences of the two lead characters - most especially, from intense close-ups on Rampling's face.

The consequences of aging are not side-stepped but bravely embraced. The mid-shot of Courtenay in his Y-fronts, for example, certainly does not evoke glamour.

The ending also suggests a certain fluidity in meaning, with the audience entrusted to make their own.

I must admit to investing a little more in this film, for there are parallels with my own life, such as shared life experiences (and a first name with Geoff), as well as some of his traits, such as impatience with old friends who abandon their youthful idealism for the good life.

45 Years first screened at the New Zealand International Film Festival last year, now in general distribution.

- Geoff Lealand teaches in Screen and Media Studies at the University of Waikato.