Tara Ison - Reeling Through Life - How I Learned to Live, Love and Die at the Movies

At thirty-three, my young man certainly isn’t a child: The seventeen years’ difference between us might make me old enough to be his mother (ouch), but there’s nothing criminal about it. But even in movies about two legal and consenting adults, the older woman is rarely anything other than a figure of sad despair or unhinged desperation. And even gloomier than the ugly downward spiraling of Mrs. Robinson, I remember, is The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone , one of those old afterschool Afternoon Movies on television I channel-surfed into at twelve or thirteen — and this one, I was so happy to find, starred Scarlett O’Hara! 90I’d been a Gone with the Wind freak since reading it at nine years old, had seen the movie countless times, and was madly in love with Vivien Leigh and her green-eyed siren’s song, could not wait to see that dazzlingly beautiful face again.

But here is no vixenish, dimpled Scarlett; she is now forty-eight-year-old Vivien Leigh playing Karen Stone, a wealthy, newly widowed actress who has, in fact, aged out of a career as a romantic leading lady:

SCORNFUL THEATERGOING WOMAN

My God, what’s happened to Karen Stone?

SNIDE THEATERGOING MAN

Well, you know, there comes a time when Mother Nature catches up with you old gals.

SCORNFUL THEATERGOING WOMAN

Oh come now, she can’t be that old!

SNIDE THEATERGOING MAN

Well, she’s forty-five !

And while she is still Vivien Leigh , for heaven’s sake, still a movie-star-beautiful woman with her feline bones and her dancer’s posture showing off her Balmain-designed pencil-skirt suits, that beautiful face has changed; the cat eyes have dimmed, the delicate features have slipped a bit and settled into harder, more angular lines — I never imagined Scarlett O’Hara could age . As an adolescent, I am taken aback to see Vivien Leigh this way; it is the opposite but equally disorienting effect of seeing old photos of your grandmother, back when she was full-cheeked and glowing with a sexual spark you never imagined her — this now-ancient woman — to ever possess.

Karen has decamped to Rome, hoping to lead “an almost posthumous existence,” a Voiceover announces; Karen herself tells a friend she feels her life may as well be over, that “three or four years is all I need. . after that, a cut throat will be a convenience.” She has stumbled into a culture of pretty Italian boys offering companionship to lonely moneyed women of that certain age ; a ragged, angel-faced kid lingers hopefully below the window of her fabulously appointed apartment, haunt-stalking her literally and symbolically for the rest of the film. But Karen’s casual friend, the vague “Contessa,” has something else in mind for her: Karen is “only beginning to find out what loneliness is,” she says to Paolo, the young stud she is planning to pimp out (played by twenty-four-year-old Warren Beatty, unctuous, indolent, and toothy). Paulo is a suaver version of the street urchin; he knows just how to pose in a well-cut suit, how to lean in attentively to a carefully-groomed woman over the candle-lit dinner table and murmur how alike they are in their lonely drifting. Karen is no fool; she knows it’s all a hustle, an act, and she is happy to play along for the diversion and amusement this delicious young man offers — as long as there is no greater cost than those at-arm’s-length dinners. She isn’t one of those sad, self-deluded women, of course not.

But she is embarrassed when confronted by her cynical friend Meg:

MEG

Isn’t it odd how women of our age suddenly start looking for beauty in our. . well, our male partners. .

Meg warns Karen to be careful of what she might become — or even what she might be perceived to be:

MEG

A figure of fun. The stock character of a middle-aged woman crazily infatuated with a succession of young boys. .

Karen scoffs. . but as Paolo manipulates her emotions, keeps her alternately ego-stroked and insecure, she becomes swoony and inflamed. When he rolls out a sob story about a buddy swindled out of money and now in dire need of “help,” she knows she’s being tested — and decides to test him back:

KAREN

When the time comes when nobody desires me for myself, I’d rather not be desired at all. .

And she retreats to her bedroom, steps out of her Balmain suit, slides between the sheets of her bed in her modest slip, and waits. Paolo does what he must; the deal is sealed.

And voila, Scarlett is, briefly, back: Karen gets a flirty new smile, a becoming new haircut, and a vivid red suit — strolling down the street, a girlish lilt to her step, she literally stops to smell the flowers. But it is only one scene later that the bickering tug-of-war begins: Karen is needy and clingy, Paolo huffy and petulant. She anxiously studies her face in the mirror, snaps on a bright table lamp to get a better look — and gasps, horrified and afraid. Tick tick tick. She offers to buy him new clothes; he accuses her of using him , whines their relationship is special , so unlike all those other arrangements: “This is different, we love each other,” he insists, mock-insulted, Warren Beatty chewing that Italian accent hard. There is such naked longing on her face— does he desire her for herself, really and truly? Is she that special to him? Paolo is playing her, of course — or is he? We are meant, briefly, to share Karen’s self-deluded hope — when he gazes into her searching eyes, I believe his protestations of love, too. But then we are invited to laugh at her, just as Paulo and the Contessa do, exulting in their inevitable payday. . because, after all, how could this beautiful young man possibly love or desire this fading woman, really and truly, no matter how beautiful she once was?

The tabloids trumpet their affair, and Karen becomes an object of pitiable ridicule, just as Meg warned; Karen begs Paolo to reassure her she is not like all those other pathetic women: “I’m not an old fool with nothing but money to give you!” She has so much to offer him. . doesn’t she? But he is finally fed up she has not followed through on her implied promise of riches; “What are you, fifty ?” he sneers, and walks out, cutting his losses, abandoning her.

And it hits her she has become exactly the thing she most feared: That stock character, that figure of fun — and it’s too late to become anything else, to play any other role in this life. We hear the voices echoing in her head: Paulo telling her this is different, we love each other , followed by that stab of What are you, fifty? Her own voice, three or four years is all I need, after that, a cut throat will be a convenience. . . All she can do now, at last, is toss her keys down in invitation to that ragged, angel-faced street urchin; her “posthumous existence” will be living with the death of dignity and hope.

I remember feeling so sorry for Karen; how sad, to be so old, so unalluring! She might as well be dead, sure. But now — what am I, fifty , ouch — with my own impassioned young suitor, my condescending pity shifts to an uncomfortable identification with her. Am I a Karen, is my young man a Paolo? Am I self-deludedly trying to convince myself I am not self-deluded, that I really am still an object of genuine desire? Older women, after all, everyone knows, are so hungry and grateful for the slightest loving or erotic caress. . am I being manipulated? Am I just an easy lay, a gullible mark for some insidious, insulting purpose? Am I being used?