A Idade da Reflexão

Compared to the many classics Michael Powell had previously directed, this Australian film is just a light, piece of fluff, but it is worth watching to see the young Helen Mirren and another solid performance by James Mason, who must have had a particular interest in playing this part as he also co-produced the film. Don't be misled by the title, the issue of sexual relations between an older man and an under-age girl is only really hinted at, the main theme being the need for an artist to find new inspiration. The tone of the film is essentially light, and, for me, the highlight is a couple of hilarious scenes in which Jack McGowran, as Mason's scrounging mate Nat Kelly, meets his comeuppance at the hands of a man-hunting neighbor of Mason's.

A famous painter retreats to a somewhat remote island in Australia's Great Barrier Reef to inspire his creativity and finds a young woman to pose for him. Mason is fine as the painter. In one of her earliest roles, Mirren looks amazingly young and alluring as the object of Mason's desire. MacGowran provides the comedy as Mason's unwanted guest on the island. There isn't much of a plot in this laid-back and light-hearted comedy, but it features a quirky cast of characters and is quite enjoyable. The dog is cute and receives on-screen billing. The island setting is beautifully filmed under Powell's masterful direction.

Age of Consent, from the novel of the same name by Norman Lindsay, is essentially a middle-aged man's fantasy -- but a sweet and likable one.

James Mason plays Bradley Morahan, a successful New York painter who has become tired of turning out the same old commercial tripe. He longs for home (Queensland, Australia) and the chance to experience life first hand, again. He rents a shack on a small island off the Great Barrier Reef and moves in with his dog Godfrey, stocking it with food, drink and oil paints.

The island is a tropical paradise, inhabited by fruit bats and several other characters content to have left the world behind. The granddaughter of one of the residents is a young girl named Cora, played by Helen Mirren. She supports her alcoholic grandmother by selling crayfish and oysters to the store on the mainland and dreams of getting away and becoming a hairdresser. Morahan is charmed by her and agrees to help her see her dream come true by paying her to model for him. She proves to be just the inspiration he needed and he begins to paint -- and live -- with renewed energy.

The film is easy-paced, amusing, and despite a few upsets along the way, leads to a fantasy conclusion. If you want to spend a pleasant couple of hours getting away from it all, I recommend seeing this film.

Directed by Michael Powell, it is now available on the Films of Michael Powell DVD along with A Matter of Life and Death (Stairway to Heaven), starring David Niven.

This was a wonderful movie. Those who criticise it probably missed the sixties. It was a liberating expression of moral freedom in its time. Cora spent most of the film frolicking about naked and what a wonderful lindsayan figure of a woman she was! I just loved this movie and would recommend it to anyone to see. Take a moment out to travel back in time to the beginnings of your moral freedoms.

He only wanted her for her body--to paint, of course....

I just saw this film and found it absolutely delightful. As others have noted, Helen Mirren is a wonder as a young girl working out the relationship between her body's strength and its beauty, and how each can help her get what she wants. There is one moment, when she takes control of a motorboat after having dumped a would-be lover overboard, when I saw the future Jane Tennison. James Mason is also marvelous as the obsessive painter. The natural setting, on the Great Barrier Reef, is liberating and beautiful but the heart of the movie is the little cabin which goes from a dump to a layered, painted work of art. This man's passion to make things, to create color and line on every available surface, seems to fill the movie's surface too. Near the end, when Cora enters the cabin and we see her surrounded by his paintings of her, the relationship between art and life seems to be a very happy one. It's too bad Michael Powell didn't get to make more films in the 1960s and early 70s. I think that if I could have seen this film at the time it was made (when I was a girl in my late teens, for whom nudity was not an option) it would have meant a lot to me.