They were once called baby boomers because there were never as many children born as in their time. But because they are now getting on in years, the “baby” is deliberately omitted. Instead, as they approach retirement, these many are increasingly looking for role models for the new phase of life. They no longer want to be satisfied with Philip Roth’s famous dictum that old age is a “massacre”.
The fact that Elke Heidenreich declared the last years of her life to be a period of her own is probably one reason for the great response. The 81-year-old’s very personal and humorous reflection is the most successful non-fiction book of the year so far. Heinz Bude has also helped the new old people to understand their generation. What they have learned from the sociologist: the greatest challenge is now coming. They will also fight for places in the nursing home.
Gerontologischer Slapstick
The film that is the latest trend comes from France. The boulevard comedy “From Nice with Love” is not set in a retirement home, but is structured like a photo love story for former “Bravo” readers. Everything in this gerontological slapstick comedy revolves around the question of whether there is such a thing as an age limit for love, desire and jealousy. According to Ivan Calbérac (“Breakfast with Monsieur Henri”), who wrote the screenplay and directed the film, it never ends.
French film stars Sabine Azéma and André Dussollier, who have often appeared together in front of the camera, play the ageing film couple who have gone astray. He, François, a retired general, has decorated their house with so many sabres, grenades and medals that it would seem as if they were at war, although the marital battle has not even begun yet. Rather, Annie is celebrated to begin with. July 14, the French national holiday, is her birthday, and the family sings a serenade to the tune of the Marseillaise.
The avenger with the spade looks old compared to his rivals: André Dussollier and Thierry Lhermitte.New Visions Film Distribution
But it quickly becomes clear that this is just a cakewalk. One son, Amaury (Gaël Giraudeau), has turned out exactly as his father had wished, as a soldier and father of four children. But the other, Adrien (Sébastien Chassagne), is still single in Nice, where he works as a puppeteer, much to François’s annoyance. And then the lesbian relationship of daughter Capucine (Joséphine de Meaux) is discovered – a scandal in the ultra-conservative family.
The plot begins when François finds a stack of love letters in the attic. The faded vows of love are from an affair Annie had in the distant past, but the cuckolded general loses his temper. He feels “like Napoleon at Waterloo,” he rants, and goes off to war – equipped with camouflage clothing, combat food and an assault rifle. Annie’s reassurances cannot dissuade him from traveling to the “crime scene” of Nice to put an end to his rival, so Annie goes with him.
The growling lion is a kitten
It’s a weak start to this love triangle burlesque, which doesn’t get any better when it turns out that former lover Boris (Thierry Lhermitte) is a family friend from the 1980s. The judo master is far superior to the retired general, not only in matters of love, but also in hand-to-hand combat. When François growls that an injured lion is extremely dangerous, he comes across as more like a kitten. Boris’s greatest asset is probably that his hedonistic and carefree lifestyle as a wealthy heir under the sun of the Côte d’Azur is the seductive opposite of the stiff family man François.
Unfortunately, Ivan Calbérac’s script is rather unimaginative in its direction. To characterize the characters, he can’t think of anything better than giving Annie a copy of Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” and François the memoirs of Charles de Gaulle. He lets Boris quote Nietzsche. Sentences like “I may have gotten old, but I’m not out of date” are as dusty as the old attic box that the letters were in. The film plods along predictably, without any real punch lines or character development, as if Calbérac had adopted François’ military truth that you always know when a war is starting but never when it’s ending.
Conceived as a comedy that was primarily intended to generate high box office revenue in the summer months, the plan worked. On the very first day, 35,000 French people saw “N’avoue jamais”, “Never confess!”, as the film is called in the original. And it would be unfair to compare the film with serious discussions on the subject, such as Michael Haneke’s film “Love”. But all the virulent subjects – sexuality, lost illusions, conflict between generations in old age – are also present in this comedy.
But they don’t sparkle, they fade. Even the greatest challenge of this stage of life – that the time that has passed is significantly longer than everything that is yet to come – is administered as a painless pill. “From Nice with Love” could have been a new, cheerful “La Boum” for the boomer generation. The opportunity was missed.
