Movies Like ‘The Idea of You’ Are Missing a Crucial Demographic
Where are age-gap stories about women in their 60s and older?
There’s been a spate of articles recently on the return of the “cougar” in the aftermath of two movies featuring middle-aged women finding romantic love and hot sex with much younger men — The Idea of You with Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine and the Netflix rom-com A Family Affair, with Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron.
While I detest the term “cougar,” I am delighted to see movies in which young men find an older woman desirable, because we are.
Still, the women are hardly “old” — Hathaway’s character is a newly-minted 40 and Kidman’s is 50.
While it wasn’t a relationship, even Emma Thompson’s retired teacher in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, who hires a 20-something sex worker, is in her 50s.
Same with the latest iteration of the Bridget Jones franchise, the upcoming Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, in which the 50-something widowed Bridget, played by Renée Zellweger, gets cozy with a man in his 20s, played by Leo Woodall.
Even Diane Keaton’s character in Something’s Gotta Give, who attracts the 30-something doctor played by Keanu Reeves, is in her late 50s.
