I was not at all surprised to find that the director is a man, who sadly co-wrote the script with a young woman. As an old woman (a few years younger than Fields) I think I need to toss my two cents into the hat.
Sally Fields is a great actress. Apparently they couldn't find a woman who looked the age of the character -- Fields, maybe thanks to the drugs she advertises -- looks like she could be half her age. And she is gorgeous. Because, as with women's roles throughout history, you can't have a homely woman. You can have fat, ugly men, but the woman they end up with is always, always, gorgeous. And thin.
So here she is playing Doris, who many years ago gave up her hopes and dreams to take care of her mother. Like her mother, she is a pack-rat. She has lived in the same house all her life. She has had the same job for much of her life, even though the company has been remade with the times, with a younger, hipper staff. Because these young folk are good guys, they have grandfathered -- or grandmothered -- her job into their new plans. Their new plans include replacing office chairs with exercise balls.
What everybody seems to find so exciting and refreshing about this movie is that Doris still has sexual desires and fantasies. Imagine that. And what makes it a comedy and also poignant at the same time of course is that she ends up with a steamy crush on the newest hot, young member of the staff.
Moments after her mother's funeral, Doris' brother and wife start to pressure her to get rid of the junk, sell the house and move on. Suddenly concerned about her welfare as they hadn't been in all the years Doris had taken care of mom. And now telling Doris what she needed to do to join the world.
This reminds me of the book, Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?, by Roz Chast,
which also got great acclaim. Here too you have a couple of old folks who have gone along planning and living their lives quite adequately, and now that they are old, here comes their annoyed and annoying daughter. She is annoyed at all that they have collected. She is annoyed that they live so far away. She is apparently annoyed that, as their only child, she feels responsible for them.
So too, from moments into the movie, the aggrieved brother-and-wife duo step in to tell her what she needs to do to fix her life. I was not happy. I cheered when she threw them out of the house, asserting her right to her memories and the stuff that reflects those memories.
And then she develops this instant crush on her new fellow employee. With hot fantasy scenes.
I imagine these scenes were so delightful because they were irreverent and also made us all so uncomfortable. Even though, in my humble opinion, Fields is so much more attractive than Greenfield. And she does pull off making Doris' venture into the indie music scene great fun, although the undercurrent is always that it is the old woman's young behavior that makes her so fascinating.
Let me just put this into its proper perspective. Flip the gender, and all we would have is another old man/young woman relationship. Nothing to look at here. I can think of an awful lot of older men/ younger women relationships that totally gross me out. In fact, that whole fat ugly man attracting a gorgeous woman stereotype also puts me off.
I don't find the crush cute. The fantasy sex scenes are uncomfortable not because they are of an older woman wanting to make love to a younger man, but because they reinforce how bizarre it is for an older woman to want to make love to a younger man. Ageism is indeed a woman's burden, and I find it tiresome and offensive.
So how about a movie about an old woman written by an old woman? About a woman who when her family tells her to sell her stuff and go quietly, she tells them to fuck off.
This surely wasn't the movie. In the end, when Doris faces the fact that her love wasn't reciprocated, she grows up. She gets rid of all the clutter and moves out of the family home, I imagine so a real family can take possession of all that space to which she is not entitled. She leaves her job to the young innovators. In a final act of rebellion, she does throw the exercise ball at her young boss. And in a final nod to just how awkward this whole crush has been, she apologizes once more, he doesn't speak, she has one more romantic fantasy, and then, as the elevators close, he calls for her. OMG, maybe he really is having second thoughts about their future. Or maybe the screenwriters/director wanted us old ladies to have something to hold onto as the credits roll.
No thank you. I'll just wait for the role where Sally Fields rejects the smitten young guy who sees her for the hot, fascinating woman she really is.
