Innocence (No Rating)
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After a lifetime apart, two former lovers accidentally reunite and fumble with questions of infidelity (she's married now) and mortality (both are on the cusp of turning 70). It's kind of like a Woody Allen movie, but with fewer jokes, and a female lead who's as old as her male counterpart. Just on principle alone, it's hard not to applaud a film in which two unglamorously ancient people grapple with their uncontrollable hots for one another. And the actors--Charles Tingwell and Julia Blake--can be downright adorable: When the heroine struts back to her husband after enjoying an illicit tryst, Blake manages to put the sex back in sexagenarian. The rather messy pacing seems true to life in general, and to this story in particular: Rather than proceeding along an artful arc, Blake's Claire bounces uncontrollably from here to there. Yet this charming tearjerker about decent but flawed people who harm others in spite of themselves seems to grow slighter the more it focuses on the big issues. For instance, the word love is batted around with careless ease, usually in unfortunate lines such as, "Love becomes more real the closer it comes to death." Even if that's true, it doesn't seem so when it's stated like that. (Keith Harris)
Review by Keith Harris
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