Late Bloomers

When Late Bloomers opens, Mary (Isabella Rosselini) is struggling to remember recent happenings, having no idea how she got from an event the night before to her bed with husband Adam (William Hurt). Scared by this little hiccup in routine, she requests a CT scan from a doctor, who warns her of the importance of exercise now that she's reaching her 60th year. While she reluctantly participates in an Aquarobics program, Adam suffers a late-life crisis, having received an architecture award typically presented to those on the verge of retirement. This ageist rude awakening is exacerbated by a retirement home project thrown on his desk, reminding him that his career and resulting identity are soon to be things of the past. And while he demonstrates an emotional disconnect, spending his days (and nights) at the office, working on dual projects with younger architects to hold onto his youth, his wife buys mobility aids for the home, giving him visual reminders of the very thing he's overtly denying. Their clash is inevitable, as is Mary's eventual need to feel sexually relevant, presenting herself as an object of desire in public spaces, leading to a little bout of fleeting validation, in the form of infidelity. While the set-up is ripe with possibility, exploring a stage in the life of a married couple that is often ignored within a youth-driven cinematic lexicon that prefers to de-sexualize anyone over the age of 40, Julie Gavras's film fails to deliver on its premise. Both characters demonstrate only single, superficial anxieties about their mortal consciousness: Mary wants men to find her sexy and Adam wants to demonstrate cutting edge vitality in his career. Even their conflict is surprisingly flat and overly simplistic, which is odd for a couple that has three children and has spent more than 30 years together. Presumably, they'd have more to bicker or complain about than the nature of getting older. But, alas, this is as deep as Late Bloomers gets. And there's even a coup from the three children to reunite their parents towards the end of the film, which is even less amusing than the Parent Trap set-up suggests. No supplements are included with the DVD, which isn't surprising for a tepid release of this nature.