Why the sex scene in 45 Years is a mod­ern classic

When 45 Years pre­miered at 2015 Berlin Film Fes­ti­val, the advance press sold the lead cou­ple as a pro­gres­sive cin­e­mat­ic vision of being in your six­ties and sev­en­ties. Lines like: ​“They read Kierkegaard and still have sex!” con­jured images of humans who have entered a hal­lowed zone with all of the wis­dom of age and none of its libid­i­nal mellowing.

The line about Kierkegaard and sex is not quite right on either account. Kate gen­tly teas­es Geoff for hav­ing so many copies of a book that he’s nev­er com­plet­ed. He’s built a life con­tain­ing items that have not been ful­ly metabolised into his iden­ti­ty. The Kierkegaard book sig­ni­fies aspi­ra­tion rather than reality.

Like­wise, the sex scene is anoth­er case of ​‘almost ran’. Yet, if the char­ac­ters don’t cli­max, at least one of the film’s arcs does. Kate and Geoff’s trip to their bed­room is pre­ced­ed by a cosy nos­tal­gia ses­sion down­stairs. The film opens with Geoff receiv­ing a let­ter in Ger­man noti­fy­ing him that the body of a long-dead ex-girl­friend has been dis­cov­ered, pre­served in ice. Since that moment, he has been dis­tract­ed – not ful­ly in the world that con­tains his wife. When the nos­tal­gic pat­ter begins, and he remem­bers meet­ing Kate in Leeds (“You were a knock­out”) and final­ly, he is back. He sees her, he loves her, he cher­ish­es her, and he wants to go to bed with her.

From Kate’s point of view, it is a relief to have her hus­band back with her and in sync with their lives. Although direc­tor Andrew Haigh presents two very bal­anced char­ac­ters (and the bods at Berli­nale kept the scales even – giv­ing Char­lotte Ram­pling and Tom Courte­nay sil­ver bears for Best Actress and Best Actor respec­tive­ly) the camera’s per­spec­tive ever so slight­ly sides with Kate. We have stayed with her in the prac­ti­cal, phys­i­cal world as she walks the dog and makes arrange­ments for their 45^th wed­ding anniver­sary. We have wor­ried about Geoff’s brood­ing. We have want­ed him to come back to us. So when he returns down the tightrope of shared mem­o­ries and propo­si­tions Kate, we indulge him with joy­ful relief and go upstairs.

Andrew Haigh spoke to us about the empa­thy he has for his char­ac­ters. Tom Courte­nay and Char­lotte Ram­pling meet and match his ide­ol­o­gy and cre­ate a ten­der moment for the cin­e­mat­ic ages. A top­less Geoff beats his chest while growl­ing at Kate. She looks at him with love. The ges­ture would be com­i­cal on a lean younger man. For the bloat­ed, slight­ly ram­shackle old­er Geoff, it is goofy sweet­ness per­son­i­fied. Kate’s ador­ing reac­tion proves how right for one anoth­er they are, right now, in this fun­ny pre-coital moment.

It’s a high­light before a tail­spin. This cou­ple – par­tic­u­lar­ly Geoff– have the capac­i­ty to absent-mind­ed­ly induce great lash­ings of hurt. Yet when the lights are on behind both their eyes, they are capa­ble of exquis­ite per­son­al short­hand that speaks, not just of one sec­ond, but of all the sec­onds that led up to it – in short, of their whole life togeth­er. It is won­drous for a direc­tor to cre­ate a scene in which the watch­ing audi­ence gets a sense of the chem­istry that has pow­ered a cou­ple for decades of cohab­i­ta­tion. One can imag­ine a younger Geoff per­form­ing the same move way back into the past and an old­er Geoff per­form­ing the same move far into the future, with wild­ly dif­fer­ent mea­sures of suc­cess. Kate and Geoff’s rela­tion­ship has momen­tum and nuance. It’s so full that it fills not only a fea­ture film but – for the fan­ci­ful and cap­ti­vat­ed – it rip­ples out into the ether.

There is so much that has been built between them. There is so much to lose in their com­ing apart from one anoth­er. This poten­tial loss is the ten­sion that under­pins the film. Geoff los­es his erec­tion and the dis­tances between their reac­tions is telling. She doesn’t mind. She enjoyed the ride. Now it’s over – she just wants to enjoy him. Geoff is deflat­ed. He couldn’t per­form in the present and so floats back on mem­o­ry to the past. They were togeth­er and now they are apart. What could have been one type of lit­tle death becomes a more poignant but equal­ly messy one.