love in the time of ageism

Look closely at this picture. Closer. Tell me - do you see (as I do) a 70-something man and a 50-something woman? Perhaps it is tough to tell from this particular photo, but this is Hollywood's version of Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza from the brilliant Gabriel Garcia Marquez' novel Love in the Time of Cholera. Both Garcia Marquez' deftly-drawn characters are supposed to be in their mid-70s at the novel's conclusion, when they finally come together and find love in one another arms. But put Hollywood in charge and it is just another case of Michael Douglas meets Catherine Zeta Jones, or Woody Allen meets Scarlet Johansson (or any of Woody's puerile leading ladies, for that matter), or the endless litany of cinematic middle-aged, balding, wrinkled and overweight men who score eternally youthful, vibrant and slender younger women.

M and I watched this film last night. There is not much to recommend it, aside from elaborate stage sets and fabulous period costumes (for which, I admit, I am always a sucker). It was a pretty film and I guess I might go so far as to say it was entertaining -but only insofar as it was better then, say, Everybody Loves Raymond or whatever other dross might be on offer on network television on a Sunday evening. It featured a fantastic bevy of topless women, if that is what you are into. But when I reflect upon it now the morning after, all I can think of is Fermina's unblemished 72-year-old complexion.

But her lovely face was not the only thing Hollywood insisted on botoxing, lifting and micro-dermabrating (to flesh out a character set in the Caribbean at the turn of the 20th century, no less). The climax of the film/story, and the conclusion of Florentino's 53-plus years of ardent yearning, involves a riverboat, a yellow cholera flag, and the two characters finally getting down and dirty. Fermina tells Florentino, "don't look at me" as she disrobes, but he insists, and when Fermina ala Hollywood drops her dress she reveals something more akin to a post-baby body in its early 40s.

My jaw dropped. If I look as good as Hollywood's Fermina at the age of 50, I shall count myself among the most fortunate of women, I thought. But at 72, I expect I will be sagging and puckered and wrinkled and bloated and deflated in all the wrong places. Or right places, depending on who is telling the story.

Of course, Florentino is aged appropriately in Hollywood's vision, so I can't deduce that the makers of this film were simply lacking the agency of clever makeup artists. Somebody somewhere made the disgusting decision to age Florentino, to give him a gut, to hobble his strut, to cover his hair in a bald-cap, but they decided to leave Fermina eternally youthful and therefore "beautiful."

The saddest thing about all this is that because of that single misstep, the final climactic scene was utterly ruined for me. In Garcia Marquez' novel there is something so tender and so precious about two old coots finally finding love. Sure, they aren't the spring chickens they once were, they are shy about their rusty and worn bodies, they feel foolish when they consider what others might think. But they love one another despite all these things. Love is not the exclusive birthright of the young, or of the young looking -but it is available to all who will reach out and grab it. But if we take Hollywood's version at face value, we will not see ripe and venerable faces at all. We will imagine the myth to be true: that only youthful-looking old women still get laid. The sad truth is that Garcia Marquez' novel exists in part to defy that myth.