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

There is a subliminal bittersweetness, however, to the older woman/younger man love story, because, yes, that anthropological ticking clock is so damn loud — we can hear it over the closing credits. We know on some level this misaligned pair are not going to grow old together, that their mutually enthralling passion has already peaked; let the wane of lust begin. One of these two is going to grow older, and one is just going to grow old, and guess who is going to leave whom?

Nothing shows this more literally and visually than Texasville , the 1990 sequel to The Last Picture Show , set in 1984, thirty-odd fictional years after we last saw Sonny, Jacy, and Ruth. 97Sonny/Timothy is now middle-aged (Timothy, thirty-nine, ineffective makeup trying to age him to fifty), but Ruth/Cloris (sixty-four, effectively playing seventy) is now an old woman, edging toward shriveled crone — forget about their being together now (they aren’t, and their storyline is minimal), the thought of them ever having been together borders on distasteful, creepy. What does Sonny/Timothy think, if anything, when he looks at Ruth/Cloris now, I wonder? What does she think back on, when she looks at him? “He loved me once. .” Ruth says, and I cannot tell if that is gratitude in her voice, or longing, or regret.

SNIDE THEATERGOING MAN

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

Everyone worries about losing a lover’s love, of course; the fear of rejection is present from time to time in all relationships. I have been rejected, and I have been the one to reject: Hurt, heal, move on, repeat.

But this time the fear feels different; this young man has brought into my life a thrilling reminder of my body’s most euphoric function, a validation of my visceral presence in the world; I have my groove back. And I fear, this time, when that unabashedly lustful gleam fades from his eye — when Karen’s harsh table lamp inevitably snaps on, when he leaves me sitting alone on my bed like Ruth — he will take all of that with him. And that without that last-gasp bloom he has reinspired, I will have little to offer — or, like Karen, I will try to offer whatever I have left, but will find no sincere takers. And then what?

PAULO

What are you, fifty ?

Yes, Paulo, I am. I will soon no longer be an older woman; like Mrs. Robinson, I will simply, at last, be old. Will I become that caricature, then, that

MEG

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

tossing my keys to some cute baby barista guy? Is that how the story of my sexual life will conclude?

“What’s with all the hand-wringing?” my friend Theresa says. “You have plenty of options, just go out there and find someone! You don’t have to be alone!”

But it isn’t a partnership I crave. I’m not afraid of being alone — that’s my comfort zone. I’m afraid of losing something else from my life: The thrill, the steam, the primal heat, the divine pulsing spark of desirability. I have heard older women describe the fade of their sexual allure as liberating, but I fear, when that is extinguished or lost, that my own posthumous, invisible, dismissible existence will begin. And I cannot shake that fear, I can’t stop thinking about this, I can’t fake out Mother Nature or stop the clock or control any of this, and the anxiety is not doing my crow’s feet or worry lines any favors.

So I tell my sweet young man that our time together has come to an end. That he’s lovely, but this no longer works for me. That I wish him all the best: Go, have fun , I say.

Because this feels like the last elegant, self-assured, self-protective thing I can do. Older skin is thinner, more delicate. I bruise easily these days. This is the one way I can have any control at all over this narrative. It is the only way I can know how this part of the story will end — the only way I can sit on my own quilt, on my own bed, by myself, by choice.

And he protests just enough to satisfy, for a moment, my hungry, fragile ego, and then he goes. His options are unlimited, after all. He has all the time in the world.

85 The Graduate (Embassy Pictures/United Artists, 1967): screenplay by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry, based on the novel by Charles Webb; directed by Mike Nichols; with Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman

86 Class (Orion Pictures, 1983): written by Jim Kouf and David Greenwalt; directed by Lewis John Carlino; with Andrew McCarthy and Jacqueline Bisset

87 Notes on a Scandal (Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2006): screenplay by Patrick Marber, based on the novel by Zoe Heller; directed by Richard Eyre; with Cate Blanchett

88 The Reader (The Weinstein Company, 2008): screenplay by David Hare, based on the novel by Bernhard Schlink; directed by Stephen Daldry; with Kate Winslet

89 Summer of ’42 (Warner Bros., 1971): written by Herman Raucher; directed by Robert Mulligan; with Jennifer O’Neill and Gary Grimes; My Tutor (Crown International Pictures, 1983): written by Joe Roberts; directed by George Bowers; with Caren Kaye and Matt Lattanzi

90 The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (Warner Bros., 1961): screenplay by Gavin Lambert and Jan Read, based on the novel by Tennessee Williams; directed by José Quintero; with Vivien Leigh, Warren Beatty, Lotte Lenya, and Coral Browne

91 The Last Picture Show (Columbia Pictures, 1971): screenplay by Larry McMurtry and Peter Bogdanovich, based on the novel by Larry McMurtry; directed by Peter Bogdanovich; with Cloris Leachman, Timothy Bottoms, and Cybill Shepherd

92 4 °Carats (Columbia Pictures, 1973): screenplay by Leonard Gershe, based on the play by Jay Presson Allen; directed by Milton Katselas; with Liv Ullmann and Edward Albert

93 White Palace (Universal Pictures, 1990): screenplay by Ted Tally and Alvin Sargent, based on the novel by Glenn Savan; directed by Luis Mandoki; with Susan Sarandon and James Spader

94 Something’s Gotta Give (Columbia Pictures, 2003): written and directed by Nancy Meyers; with Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, and Keanu Reeves; How Stella Got Her Groove Back (20th Century Fox, 1998): screenplay by Terry McMillan and Ronald Bass, based on the novel by Terry McMillan; directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan; with Angela Bassett and Taye Diggs

95 Don Jon (Relativity Media, 2013): written and directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt; with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Julianne Moore

96 Harold and Maude (Paramount Pictures, 1971): written by Colin Higgins; directed by Hal Ashby; with Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort

97 Texasville (Columbia Pictures, 1990): screenplay by Peter Bogdanovich, based on the novel by Larry McMurtry; directed by Peter Bogdanovich; with Cloris Leachman, Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, and Cybill Shepherd

THE BEACH HOUSE, THE BATHROBE, AND SAVING THE WORLD

Julia

The Shining

Rich and Famous

Reds

Doctor Zhivago

Sophie’s Choice

The World According to Garp

Sunset Boulevard

The Big Picture

Barton Fink