Elderly love goes soft in flaccid 'Innocence'

When you finally qualify for the senior citizen discount, there's not much reason left to go to the movies. Hollywood rarely offers serious leading roles for over-65 actors, instead turning them into grumpy neighbors, kindly grandfathers, or Santa Claus. Harrison Ford and Sean Connery might still have sex appeal, but Walter Matthau, in his dotage, did not.

COURTESY IDP The master. 'Nuff said.

Australian director Paul Cox, then, has staged a minor coup with his film Innocence, which tells the story of an elderly couple, lovers in their youth, who reunite after a 50-year separation. Yes, they have sex. But Cox never makes their relationship seem gross or comical, and he mercifully refrains from fatuous references to Viagra. However, despite the brazen premise, Cox is undone by his penchant for melodrama—a gushing sentimentality that ultimately overwhelms the film.

The long and sappy road begins when Andreas (Charles Tingwell) writes a letter to ex-squeeze Claire (Julia Blake), who has been married to another man for 44 years, and asks her to meet him for dinner. He charms her, but she vows not to begin an affair that would destroy her family. Claire's resolve disintegrates when Andreas begins to show her more attention than her indifferent husband John does, and soon she and Andreas are inseparable. They spend their days acting out the clichés of love, whispering French poetry on the banks of a stream, strolling through gardens, and hanging out in churches, as giddy and self-absorbed as teenagers.

Cox interrupts these romantic jaunts with flashbacks of young Claire necking with young Andreas, perhaps to reinforce the adolescent quality of their relationship. Neither seems to accept that they are now too old for hanky-panky. Claire looks in the mirror and imagines a young face. Both comment on how little the other has changed (besides the varicose veins). And they both reverse roles with their grown children, to whom they appeal for advice. "You're a wonderful child," Andreas tells his daughter Monique (Marta Dusseldorp). She retorts, with a smirk, "You're the wonderful child."

But if Claire and Andreas are acting like kids, it's only because they're getting old. Claire has weak eyes and a heart condition; Andreas, terminal cancer. For 44 years, Claire has suffered quietly in a sexually stilted marriage, and she grasps at her last chance for fulfillment. Impending death awakens the same impetuosity she and Andreas exhibited when they were young. As Claire says, "Love becomes more real the closer it comes to death." Andreas chimes back, "You make my life and my death more beautiful."

In their earnestness, the couple delivers a slew of trite observations about love. "Real love never dies," declares Andreas, as he explains to a priest that men and women express God through their feelings for one another. Later, he offers an astute explanation for Claire's weak eyes, which never have enough moisture: "You've shed too many tears." She responds, "Life is brutal at times."

To their credit, the actors have a chemistry that helps compensate for the flat dialogue. Especially vivid is Terry Norris as John, Claire's bumbling husband, who seems clueless about his wife's needs even after four decades of marriage. When he and Claire join another couple for dinner, he is startled when she tells a dirty joke—and dumbfounded when she begins to dance with their host. His obtuseness supplies comic relief in a film that otherwise takes itself too seriously.

Innocence never transcends its heavy-handed rhetoric about the nature of love. The characters insist that love trumps all, but their endless cooing quickly gets old. The viewer soon begins to ask questions that the film never addresses: why did Claire and Andreas break up in the first place? Why does Claire's son David (Robert Menzies) support her even though her affair is destroying his father? Perhaps these answers would be more apparent to an older viewer who has, like Claire, suffered through a dull marriage or been frightened by the approach of death. But until one is old enough to understand—and to qualify for that discount at the door—the syrupy dialogue detracts from the film's finer points.

Back to A&E...