Have you ever imagined what life would be like if you'd been with your significant other for 45 years? Would you still love them, care for them, long for them? Would this shared life still seem interesting after the beauty and the charm have disappeared? And even if the answer to all these questions were yes, what would happen if after 45 years of marriage you found out that all your life and all your experiences with this other person have only existed out of sheer coincidence and you weren't even their first choice?
When we first set our eyes upon Kate (Charlotte Rampling) she's coming home from her morning walk with her German Sheperd, Max and she greets her husband Geoff (Tom Courtenay) who's drinking his morning tea at the kitchen table. We soon get accustomed to their everyday -and lonely- life that follows a routine. Kate walks the dog, sits with Geoff for a while, she then drives to town for her shopping and she also drives her husband to his work from time to time. The only thing different this week is that they're also preparing their 45th Anniversary party.
This seemingly satisfying shared life is something you'd expect to see from a couple that loves each other and knows each other after so many years. However, a letter arrives that disturbs their serenity. The letter is about Geoff's ex girlfriend (whom they've talked about but not quite recently) and it says that's she's been found perfectly preserved in the ice of the Alps where she disappeared fifty years ago.
That's when it all changes. Geoff starts to reminisce his life with "his Katya" and even feels awkward when he thinks that while she might still look as she did when she was 27 years old, he looks "like this". So Kate feels haunted by the past. A past that she was never a part of, and that if it hadn't ended as it did, she wouldn't have this present that she has now. How can she still love her husband and how can she celebrate these 45 years that she's spent with him if she wasn't his first choice and if she understands that everything they've done or haven't done during this time has been affected by his previous relationship with his missing girlfriend?
That's when it all changes. Geoff starts to reminisce his life with "his Katya" and even feels awkward when he thinks that while she might still look as she did when she was 27 years old, he looks "like this". So Kate feels haunted by the past. A past that she was never a part of, and that if it hadn't ended as it did, she wouldn't have this present that she has now. How can she still love her husband and how can she celebrate these 45 years that she's spent with him if she wasn't his first choice and if she understands that everything they've done or haven't done during this time has been affected by his previous relationship with his missing girlfriend?
The film is a realistic portrayal of an elderly couple with real pillow talk and true depictions of their most intimate moments and it plays with the constant existence of our past in our lives and the unpredictability of our present. Yet it does this quite slowly. 45 Years seems like it is always smoldering and like something will soon happen, but it never does. And while it is a great opportunity for Tom Courtenay and especially Charlotte Rambling to unravel their talents (and boy, does Rambling give an exceptional performance!) the film falls quite short (plotwise, not lengthwise) and it doesn't quite deliver all that it should.
45 Years was shown on the 4th day of the AIFF, Sunday, September 27th.
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