THE READER

Director: Stephen Daldry

Who & Who: Kate Winslet and David Kross

Howzzat: In her Oscar-winning turn, Winslet plays the 36-year-old Hanna Schmitz in post-WWII Germany who seduces 15-year-old Michael, played by Kross, and the two have a passionate affair where the younger lover would keep reading to the woman, before-during-after intense lovemaking. Their paths would cross a decade later when Michael is played by Ralph Fiennes. The crew had to wait till Kross turned 18 to shoot all the sexually-explicit scenes to avoid legal complications. 

 

 

 

THE GRADUATE

Director: Mike Nichols

Who & Who: Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman

Howzzat: The first film that always pops to mind in the age-difference film list is The Graduate where Hoffman’s aimless 21-year-old Benjamin Braddock is famously seduced by Mrs Robinson, the neglected wife of his father’s law partner, who’s almost double his age. Funnily, Hoffman was as old as 30 at the time the film was made and Bancroft was all of 36. The film also gave us the memorable Simon & Garfunkel hit Mrs Robinson.

 

 

 

 

THE PIANO TEACHER

Director: Michael Haneke

Who & Who: Isabelle Huppert and Benoit Magimel

Howzzat: Erika (Huppert), a sexually repressed piano teacher in her 40s, starts responding to the sexual advances of a 17-year-old student Walter (Magimel). She slowly grows obsessed with him as she tries to live out all her sadomasochistic fetishes. Still mostly remembered for the very Hanekian violent ending, The Piano Teacher, adapted from Nobel Prize-winning writer Elfriede Jelinek’s book of the same name, has an exemplary performance by Huppert who went on to win Best Actress at Cannes.

 

 

 

SUNSET BOULEVARD 

Director: Billy Wilder

Who & Who: Gloria Swanson and William Holden

Howzzat: Often voted in movie polls as one of the greatest American films ever made, Sunset Boulevard was actually a film noir but did feature a fascinating relationship between Swanson’s Norma Desmond, a washed-up but vain silent movie star, and Holden’s Joe Gillis, a much younger out-of-work screenwriter she almost entraps in her mansion. Both Swanson and Holden were nominated for Best Actress and Best Actor Oscars but didn’t win.

 

 

 

ELEGY

Director: Isabel Coixet

Who & Who: Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz

Howzzat: A Manhattan professor in his 50s, David (Kingsley) is sexually attracted to 24-year-old Cuban student Consuela (Cruz), leading to tragic consequences. Adapted from the Philip Roth novel The Dying Animal, the film is less interested in the palpable sexual chemistry between the two actors and aims to delve deeper into the psyche of a middle-aged man “in a state of emancipated manhood”.

 

 

 

LAST TANGO IN PARIS

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

Who & Who: Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider

Howzzat: Remembered for its torrid sex sequences, including the one where they use butter to make it better, Last Tango in Paris was also a restless portrait of all-consuming loneliness featuring two people — a middle-aged Paul (Brando) and a very young Jeanne (Schneider) — who first meet trying to rent the same apartment. It remains an inimitable testament of how a purely physical relationship can lead to quiet stirrings of the heart.

 

 

 

 

HAROLD AND MAUDE

Director: Hal Ashby

Who & Who: Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort

Howzzat: She’s 79 and he’s 19. Yes, just a 60-year difference! But what binds Maude (Gordon) and Harold (Cort) is their love for funerals. That’s where they first meet, at a funeral, and their lives are changed instantly. It’s a romance like no other and they even had a love-making scene planned, which had to be scrapped because of studio intervention. Harold and Maude was a sleeper hit when released and has, over the years, developed a cult following of sorts. 

 

 

 

CHEENI KUM

Director: R Balki

Who & Who: Amitabh Bachchan and Tabu

Howzzat: The R Balki concept movie which actually worked. Okay, the romance did. Between 64-year-old masterchef Buddhadev and 34-year-old Nina who first fight over the perfect recipe of Zafrani Pulao. The romance is charming and cute with both the actors using their years of experience to naturalise a love story that otherwise might look off-the-menu in the Indian kitchen.

 

 

 

 

ENTRAPMENT

Director: Jon Amiel

Who & Who: Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones

Howzzat: He is an ageing master thief and she an undercover insurance investigator much younger to him. When they join forces to steal art, there is an instant attraction but also deep distrust. The chemistry between Connery and Zeta-Jones is electric and while the film moves from one thrilling set-piece to another, what ultimately keeps us going is the sizzling attraction they have for each other.

 

 

 

 

BARIWALI

Director: Rituparno Ghosh

Who & Who: Kirron Kher and Chiranjeet

Howzzat: Ever since her husband-to-be died the night before their wedding, Banalata (Kher) has lived alone. Till her romantic yearnings are ignited when the sweet-talking charmer of a director Deepankar (Chiranjeet) camps in her house for a film shoot. It turns out to be mostly a one-sided affair but in those few days, she lives out her dreams and desires, feeling the kind of longing she’s never felt before.

 

 

 

 

LOLITA

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Who & Who: James Mason and Sue Lyon

Howzzat: Adapted from Vladimir Nabokov’s famously controversial book by Nabokov himself, the film ran the tagline: ‘How did they ever make the movie?’ Well, with Kubrick, the impossible is possible. Mason played Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged professor, who becomes helplessly infatuated with a teenaged “nymphet” in Dolores Haze aka Lolita (Sue Lyon). Toned down for the screen and definitely not Kubrick’s best, the film does have some unforgettable moments including the one where he paints her toes. 

[There was a 1997 version, directed by Adrian Lyne, starring Jeremy Irons as Humbert and Dominique Swain as Lolita. And, of course, Ram Gopal Varma’s take on the subject in Nishabd with Amitabh Bachchan and Jiah Khan.]

 

 

 

 

MANHATTAN

Director: Woody Allen

Who & Who: Woody Allen and Mariel Hemingway

Howzzat: In what is arguably his best film, Woody plays a 42-year-old divorced TV comedy writer Isaac Mortimer Davis who dates a 17-year-old girl named Tracy (Hemingway in an Oscar-nominated performance). And while he does find her “too young” at one point thanks to his interest in another woman, it is Tracy’s face which finally stays with him. Of course, we can make a whole list some day about the young-younger-youngest women in Woody’s romantic life but we are strictly talking about his reel fantasies here.