Amor Eterno Amor

" They've (the audience) been desensitized -- they've been Pulp Fiction-ized. I don't condemn that, but we cannot live without love, we cannot live like this. At the end of this film, I wanted to say that love is the only thing that matters, and those who think that is naïve are wrong." -- Paul Cox.

In Innocence, a sweet film by Australian director, Paul Cox, a couple approaching seventy rekindle a love affair that started almost fifty years ago. Andreas (Charles "Bud" Tingwell), a widowed organist and music teacher, decides to write to Claire (Julia Blake), the woman he was in love with in Belgium in his youth. Claire has been putting up with a joyless marriage for the last twenty years with her husband John (Terry Norris) and agrees to meet Andreas to catch up on things. I guess you know where this is going. That's right, the two pick up right where they left off. John is hurt by his wife's infidelity and comes off as obtuse, even though it is evident that Claire has never taken any responsibility for the quality of their relationship.

It is nice to see that at least one director realizes that people over the age of thirty can actually experience physical sensation; however, will someone please tell Mr. Cox that there is more to growing old than talking about memories and anticipating death. Mr. Cox is an honest filmmaker who has his heart in the right place and no doubt wishes to restore some humanity to the cinema. I applaud him for that. Unfortunately, for me, this work comes across as strained and somewhat precious. It plays like a seventy-something TV movie special with all the pretensions of a serious art film. Cox uses dream sequences, flashbacks, jump cuts, and poetic music as if he was operating from a manual about how to make a serious art film.

Most of the lovemaking is suggested and is always in good taste but even this is a problem. If your point is that older people are still capable of romantic love, then don't be afraid to show it. The theme of the renewal of love after many years can be moving and poetic as in the magnificent novel of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, "Love in the Time of Cholera". While the novel had fully-realized characters, here I found the lovers so ordinary and uninteresting that I had difficulty making any emotional connection with them. Tingwell speaks his lines in a flat monotone and does not exude much charisma.

I think the biggest problem I had was the film's overreaching for effect. Repetitious flashbacks of the young lovers and ersatz profundity add up for me to an unsatisfying experience. That the actors perform as well as they do under the circumstances is a tribute to their skill and professionalism. Over and over, the characters are asked to recite endless cliches that sound like they come from "Touched by an Angel". For example: "Each phase of life has its own kind of love", and "If God were called Beauty or Love, I would believe in Him", and "What really matters is love, everything else is rubbish", and "She wants to be needed, that's the way women are", and "Love becomes more real the closer it comes to death", and "I'm suffering but you don't care".

All that is missing is Ryan O' Neal saying that love means never having to say you're too old. At the end Claire says to Andreas, "Let's go somewhere where we can shed a few tears together". On this last point, I would join them. For a film that is full of sincerity but becomes lost in its own unctuous self-importance, perhaps a few tears might be in order.

I'm way out if my league here (and quite politically incorrect) since this genre is new to me. Forty years after a break-up never fully explained, Andreas (Charles Tingwell) is searching for his long lost love. Claire's (Julia Blake) been living close by all along, in quiet desperation. Andreas " remembers your youth innocence your smile." and gives us the theme. But life is a killer, so young love between these elders might be short. This film examines issues of love, aging, marriage and death. Filmed sensitively and portrayed insightfully, this film is one for the select audience who cares (and wonders) what has (and might) happened to those long lost lovers. May yours be as well preserved as these.

Paul Cox's "Innocence" is a beautiful, poignant gem that deserves your attention. It is a film that manages to be both realistic and completely uncynical at the same time(an unusual achievement these days).

The story concerns two people who were lovers as teenagers, separated, and meet again fifty years later. Upon meeting again they realize that they're still in love. It probably sounds sickeningly corny but it doesn't play that way. Cox details how the reigniting of their affair affects the people around them(friends, his daughter, her son and husband)and allows time for exquisitely intelligent conversations, my favorite of which takes place between the male protagonist(Charles Tingwell)and a priest concerning the reality of God.

"Innocence" is luminous.Seek it out.

Writer, director Paul Cox's `Innocence' may be about senior-citizen love, but it really is about how we must be ready when love arrives or when it returns, no matter at what age. As a cautionary tale and a lyric expression of love's power, few current movies can match this film's quiet honesty.

At the same time, `Innocence' has enough aphorisms and platitudes about love and life to make it qualify for the `I am Sam/Majestic' sugar trophy. Heroine Claire's leaden comment, `Too much love is as bad as no love at all,' is one of the winners.

But then when she says to her elderly friend before their lovemaking, "If we're going to do this--let's do it like grownups. First, close the curtains. Then, close your eyes," I have to admit it made me consider that bedroom antics at any age are pretty goofy in the cold light of maturity. In this way, Cox has caught the humanity that crosses all age lines and doesn't need the excessive silent intercutting of numerous romantic reveries from the protagonists' youth.

If you see `Innocence,' you may never have to see another love story. The romance between these two almost 70 year olds is fraught with uncertainty, deception, longing, passion, and regret. It is honest about the choices we make and their consequences. It is hopeful about our ability to recoup our losses and begin again, even at life's end.

So, like our own lives and loves, the film is alternately sublime and ridiculous. View it if only to witness on film the first and last time you will see septuagenarians making love. Hey, they look just as silly as the rest of us.

"Innocence" is the perfect title for this extraordinary film, a bold and eloquent gift to moviegoers of all ages from the brilliant Paul Cox. Nearly everything is perfect about this movie, in fact, including the casting of the radiant Julia Blake and the genuinely sweet Charles 'Bud' Tingwell in the pivotal roles. If you get the chance to see this on cable some evening, as I did tonight, do not miss the opportunity.