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“Every film is a documentary of its actors,” Jean-Luc Godard once said. Starring Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling, Andrew Haigh’s shattering marital drama 45 Years expands that maxim: As we gaze at and listen to these performers, whose characters reflect on nearly a half-century together — almost as long as the leads have been icons — the movie becomes a tender unofficial career retrospective for both.
45 Years
The movie becomes a tender unofficial career retrospective.
That year, not coincidentally, marked the release of Tony Richardson’s The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, a key work in the British New Wave that gave Courtenay his breakthrough role. Correspondences between fiction and fact abound in 45 Years, never more piercingly than when Geoff, recalling his first encounter with Kate, sometime in the mid-1960s, growls, “You were a bloody knockout.” The line prompts a kind of double vision: On the screen immediately in front of us, we look at a 69-year-old woman who still fits that lustful description; on the highlight reel playing in our minds, we recall Rampling’s signature roles of the ’60s, whether the mod star of Georgy Girl (1966) or an ensemble member of such Euro-decadent productions as Luchino Visconti’s The Damned (1969).
Haigh’s movie is told through Kate’s point of view, that of a woman whose confidence in her union, and maybe even in herself, is completely upended by an all-consuming jealousy about her husband’s past and a ghost she never knew. “I can hardly be cross with something that happened before we existed, can I?” she tells Geoff after learning more about Katya, yet Kate’s logical, serene response is belied by the two words she utters next: “But still.” As Geoff grows ever more wistful about this pre-Kate era, his devoted spouse’s sleuthing becomes more masochistic. When she comes across a particularly devastating clue, unveiled while clicking through some slides in the attic, Rampling makes the
Haigh beautifully anatomized desire and attachment among gay men in their 20s and 30s in his earlier feature Weekend (2011) and in the late, great HBO series Looking. With 45 Years, he has created not only a searching examination of a long-term marriage — and the myths that sustain it — but also a compassionate portrait of a woman reconciling herself with those false notions. Like François Ozon’s Under the Sand (2000), another movie about a specter-haunted wife and one that was crucial in revitalizing Rampling’s career, Haigh’s film further proves this actress is more than just a hallowed legend: She remains, on the eve of her 70th birthday, a brilliant, alert, indispensable performer.
45 Years
Starring Charlotte Rampling, Tom Courtenay, Geraldine James, Dolly Wells, David Sibley, and Sam Alexander. Written and directed by Andrew Haigh. Based on a short story by David Constantine. 95 minutes. Rated R. Opens Friday, January 22, at Bill Cosford Cinema (University of Miami Campus, 1111 Memorial Dr., Coral Gables, 305-284-4861, cosfordcinema.com); O Cinema Miami Beach (500 71st St., Miami Beach, 786-207-1919, o-cinema.org); Regal Cinemas South Beach 18 ( 1120 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach, 305-674-6766, regmovies.com); and Tower Theater, with Spanish subtitles (1508 SW Eighth St., Miami, 305-642-1264, towertheatermiami.com).