The Boynton Beach Bereavement Club

Give director/co-screenwriter Susan Seidelman credit for focusing on a segment sadly neglected in current cinema, single sixty-somethings facing lives without their lifetime partners. There is a gentle, loping quality to this seriocomic 2006 character-driven comedy, but it also doesn't feel quite substantial enough to provide genuine insight into their difficult situations. The various story lines rarely feel more complex than an episode of "The Golden Girls", but the principal actors - some rarely seen outside of guest appearances on reruns of "Murder, She Wrote" - compensate to a great degree.

There are three plot threads that intertwine over the course of the movie. Long-married Marilyn faces an unexpected tragedy when her exercise-obsessed husband is killed by a thoughtless woman backing her car out of a driveway. She decides to join the Boynton Beach Bereavement Club (the movie's original title) upon the prodding of Lois, a still-sexy, flirtatious interior decorator who is the unofficial social leader of the club. As Marilyn faces her anger and loneliness, Lois finds herself drawn to Donald, a younger man whom she believes is a real estate tycoon. Also in the club is Harry, who fancies himself a ladies' man and wants to help Jack, newly widowed and prime bait for the widows in the retirement community. Jack isn't ready to date until he meets Sandy, a very interested woman who isn't quite what she claims. Harry, on the other hand, tries online dating, but he finds trouble with the woman who seems like the ideal match for him.

It's nice to see actors who gained prominence in the late 1960's and early 1970's receive substantive roles in their autumnal years. Brenda Vaccaro ("Midnight Cowboy") as Marilyn and Len Cariou ("The Four Seasons") as Jack deliver the strongest performances because their characters undergo the grief and recovery of losing a loved one. Vaccaro has two particularly compelling scenes – the first where Marilyn introduces herself to the club and cannot conceal the rage over her husband's death, the second when Marilyn finally faces the woman who ran her husband over. Dyan Cannon ("Bob, Carol, Ted & Alice") as Lois and Joseph Bologna as Harry ("My Favorite Year") primarily provide comic relief. Both are as likable as ever, though it's rather disheartening to see Cannon so surgically altered. The same is true of Sally Kellerman ("M*A*S*H") who has to play the concealed Sandy close to the vest. As Donald, Michael Nouri ("Flashdance") plays a character with secrets of his own as he pursues Lois. Seidelman's thoughtful commentary is the only extra on the 2007 DVD.

"Old age is not a disease—it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses." Maggie Kuhn

Our perception of seniors in the media has recently been formed by Jerry Seinfeld's parents in a Florida retirement community. They and their aging friends are unrelentingly argumentative, early-bird dining Jewish retirees who look and act old. Susan Seidelman's Boynton Beach Club, however, will have none of that old stereotyping.

As if they were older siblings of the emerging boomer solipsists, these seniors are generally vital, best exemplified by Dyan Cannon's lithesome body but suspiciously tight face, Sally Kellerman's lean and sensual mien, and Brenda Vaccaro's vulnerable enthusiasm. All have reason to be down, for they have lost their spouses but are gaining friends to share their grief with and possibly their lives. Enter the objects of their search for companionship, among others, Joe Bologna's Harry and Len Cariou's Jack, the former a self-proclaimed ladies' man, the latter a shy recent widow lacking skills to cope with mature women.

Unlike the seniors in Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, Manna from Heaven, In her Shoes, and Golden Girls, the principals in Boynton Beach only occasionally resort to jokes about their age or ailments and prescription drugs, the ties that bind elderly everywhere but here are minimized by one reference to Viagra and one to old men who are not even ogling women when they drool. Here the seniors are actively living and loving, something the rest of the world does as well.

This dramedy is as satisfying as an afternoon drink on the veranda with a favorite granddaughter, at which happy occasion there is cause to celebrate being alive and connected between generations with nary a nod to senility.

I saw this movie, shown to a packed house and introduced by the director, Susan Seidleman, at the Philadelphia Film Festival. The audience, including me, loved it. It's funny and touching. It's so rare that a movie portrays the lives and especially loves of the older generations with anything approaching this level of authenticity and charm. Wonderful performances by people you love and don't see enough of. The movie used music to excellent effect as well. A bit of trivia -- the director's mother, who lives in the real Boynton Beach development for "active seniors," suggested the story and actually wrote the first draft of the screenplay as well as produced the movie.

A very enjoyable movie, although if you live in southeast Florida, you may be able to relate to these characters better. The one thing that really got to me was that you were observing characters whose best years were behind them, which were being portrayed by actors whose best years are also behind them, and who you remember thirty years ago. When you see the character portrayed by Dyan Cannon and you remember what Dyan Cannon looked like thirty years ago, you can relate to the character's life situation with even more sympathy and compassion; it's like you really knew what this this character was like many years ago when she was hot and vital and young.

Most of the reviewers here have rightfully stated that this is perhaps the ONLY movie made in the last 30 years about senior citizens in which they are not lampooned. That's true, to its credit. None of them so far though has called out the singular achievement of the film, and that is its very realistic and romantic treatment of Sally Kellerman and Len Cariou's night of passion. American audiences are extremely prejudiced against showing sexuality among its older population, as if it didn't exist. It does, and it does in this movie. Oh,and by the way: Sally Kellerman, at 68 years old, does nudity in the film, thus making her the most senior American actress ever to have done so. Brava, Sally!