Les âges du coeur

Nowadays, sixty years old isn't as old as sixty was thirty-five years ago. Sixty in 1981 was what seventy is now. That being explained, I don't really know why Richard Burton's character in Circle of Two was written to be sixty years old, when he has a romance with a fifteen-year-old Tatum O'Neal. If he was supposed to be fifty, the age difference would have been significant enough, and Burton was only fifty-five when he made the movie. They gave him great shocks of white hair to make him look especially old.

If you don't like May-December romances, don't watch this movie. I definitely don't have a problem with them, so I actually liked this movie. It's very tastefully done, and everyone's attitude on the love affair is understandable. In one scene, Tatum's mother says, "He's old enough to be your father!" Tatum replies, "He's old enough to be your father." It's hilarious and troublesome and confusing at the same time. I like movies like this, so if you're like me, go ahead and add Circle of Two, to your weekend watch list.

Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to adult content, I wouldn't let my kids watch it. Also, there may or may not be a rape scene (but it has nothing to do with Richard Burton).

In Toronto, the fifteen year-old student and aspirant writer Sarah Norton (Tatum O'Neal) meets the sixty year old painter Ashley St. Clair (Richard Burton) in a cafeteria while hiding from her stalker boy-friend Paul (Michel Wincott). The former successful Ashley has stopped painting for ten years and accepts to read the poems that Sarah has written. They start seeing each other at his studio and Sarah falls in love with him. Ashley feels a platonic love for Sarah that becomes his muse and he decides to paint again. When Paul snoops Sarah in Ashley's studio, he misunderstands their relationship and tries to rape Sarah in a cornfield but she self-defends with a stone hitting Paul in the head. Sarah's parents discover that their daughter has secret encounters with Ashley and lock her in her room. On her sixteenth birthday, Sarah finds that Ashley has moved to New York and decides to travel to the Big Apple to meet him.

"Circle of Two" is a wonderful and sensitive unconventional love story. The last work of Jules Dassin discloses this coming of age romance between a teenager and an old man through a tight direction without any sort of exploitation despite the polemic theme. Tatum O'Neal is fantastic in the role of a girl that falls in love with a man that could be her grandfather. The soundtrack gives an additional touch of class to this wonderful film. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Círculo de 2 Amantes" ("Círcle of 2 Lovers")

Tatum O'Neal has been movie selective and has had a checkered past.

I truly enjoy every time I see Circle of Two. When I expect the cliches I see from watching numerous films, I do not get them--even when they approach them.

This is a doomed love, but one that is real. Very few films view this aspect of love without being sappy or swallowing themselves in sexual release.

I am biased toward Tatum O'Neal as an actress, so my comments are bent toward her as such. Yet, there is something in this film that makes me understand emotional truths.

I wish I could explain the importance of this film...

The relationship between a burnt-out painter of 60 and the schoolgirl who inspires him to start working again. She falls for him, he keeps her at arm's length, but the strain of pubescent desire is too much and she starts to crack. Tatum O'Neal is lovely in this film. She's not a lazy actress, she simply doesn't ham it up like today's teen players. The sequence where she hopes to seduce painter Richard Burton by disrobing in his studio is quite sad (she wants to surprise him, he surprises her by getting angry). The scene with Tatum and Richard hanging out with a group of her school-friends is wonderful (none of the girls judge him or second-guess her) and O'Neal is sweet promising to return to Burton as quickly as she can ("I'll break all speed records!" she tells him). There are no "Lolita" overtones here. Tatum plays a fairly normal teenager who develops a crush on a fascinating man who is much older. Her heart is bound to get broken, and Burton tries his best to steer her through this. It's a simple, no-frills Canadian drama that will appeal to romantics and young women who may have experienced a crush like this along the way. **1/2 from ****

Although the movie itself could have been a bit better in design the message was so very clear. This was a love story between two people old and young. true love is ageless and timeless if it is true. An old almost waisted painter finds new spirit and life again when he meets a very very young girl who believed in him and he soon begins to paint once more. She brought life and light back into his world in doing so she falls in love with the person who gave her kindness, tenderness and treated her with respect and honor. I am very glad that the director did not allow and physical relationship between the two in the movie although the feelings between them were there.

Granted I am a romantic and i loved this movie from the first time I had seen it.