45 Years

Andrew Haigh burst into the film world in 2011 with Week­end, a nat­u­ral­is­tic chron­i­cle of two twen­tysome­thing men whose one-night stand morphs into a mean­ing­ful connection.

His fol­low up, adapt­ed from ​‘In Anoth­er Coun­try’, a short sto­ry by David Con­stan­tine, is a deep-root­ed depic­tion of inti­ma­cy that fol­lows the every­day mechan­ics of love, lay­ing bare its side-effect of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. This time the cou­ple are in their late six­ties and sev­en­ties, cre­at­ing the extra the­mat­ic lay­er of how the pass­ing of time – and the prospect of more pass­ing of time – shapes indi­vid­ual con­cerns with­in relationships.

Char­lotte Ram­pling and Tom Courte­nay as Kate and Geoff Mer­cer are a screen cou­ple for eter­ni­ty, sub­stan­ti­at­ed by friend­ship, kind­ness and the easy mock­ery that comes with com­fort­able co-habi­ta­tion. They live in a cot­tage on the Nor­folk Broads, child­less but with a dog that Kate walks every morn­ing. She strides by fields with the air of a woman in sync with life’s releas­es. She returns home to find Geoff – who is old­er and more house­bound – star­ing agog at a let­ter writ­ten in German.

The film begins on a Mon­day. On the com­ing Sat­ur­day, the cou­ple are plan­ning a par­ty to cel­e­brate their 45^th wed­ding anniver­sary. It’s an over­due fes­tiv­i­ty, delayed by Geoff ​’s med­ical com­pli­ca­tions, and intend­ed as a sweet autum­nal high­light before the decay of win­ter sets in. But before the par­ty, the infor­ma­tion in the let­ter caus­es a crater to open between the cou­ple, spit­ting out ques­tions that caus­es con­flict in an engag­ing­ly nat­ur­al and increas­ing­ly dis­turb­ing style, cre­at­ing a seis­mic shift in the plates that under­pin their domes­tic bliss.

The let­ter com­mu­ni­cates that a body has been found belong­ing to Geoff’s old flame, Katia, whom he knew 50 years ago, before he ever met Kate. Old rela­tion­ships are not infi­deli­ty unless a part­ner is liv­ing in the past. 45 Years shows a man pulling away from his sur­round­ings to become lost in time. Is this prompt­ed by unre­solved feel­ings for Katia or is he nos­tal­gic for his youth? This sin­gle melo­dra­mat­ic event func­tions as a per­fect metaphor. Katia’s body has been pre­served by ice in the ravine where she fell. She is for­ev­er 27, like a dead Dori­an Gray taunt­ing Geoff in his hand­some but white-haired and bloat­ed form.

Rampling’s pierc­ing eyes and phys­i­cal alert­ness add cal­cu­lat­ing lay­ers to a char­ac­ter patient­ly tend­ing to a shocked spouse. As Geoff shuts her out by tak­ing puffs on the drug of mem­o­ry, Kate’s autopi­lot loy­al­ty is chal­lenged by doubts that over­whelm her like music fill­ing a room. A scene in the loft amid a whirring slideshow verges into super­nat­ur­al Rebec­ca ter­ri­to­ry as a hor­ri­fied Kate shares the screen with the ghost of pos­si­bil­i­ties past.

Tom Courte­nay is her per­fect com­ple­ment as an emo­tion­al­ly lurid man, who may be sham­bling sad­ly through unre­solved per­son­al mys­ter­ies but who is still full of admi­ra­tion for his wife. In the build-up to the par­ty, scenes of shared ten­der­ness become increas­ing­ly off­set by scenes of qui­et con­flict. Haigh leaves it up to the view­er to decide which deposits from their shared bank of expe­ri­ences will have the most weight, although the final shot evokes a pure shiver.