Are movies still short-chang­ing mid­dle-aged women?

Cin­e­ma doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to its treat­ment of women over the age of 40. When they’re not busy being moth­ers, tossed aside by their part­ner in favour of a younger woman, or cheer­i­ly solv­ing cosy crimes, they are rel­e­gat­ed to the side­lines or are cor­ro­sive­ly bit­ter about their age. For men (both on and off screen) age is lit­tle bar­ri­er to oppor­tu­ni­ty – when did a few grey hairs ever stop the De Niros, Mortensens or Clooneys from scoop­ing awards and acclaim? Yet there’s anoth­er issue at hand: on the off-chance a film does cen­tre on an old­er woman, her age is inevitably a key part of the plot.

This awards sea­son would appear to have brought with it a tidal change. Rather than vet­er­an male actors, sea­soned female stars have been in the spot­light: Demi Moore, Nicole Kid­man, Mar­i­anne Jean-Bap­tiste, Pamela Ander­son and Fer­nan­da Tor­res are among those hav­ing a well-deserved mid-career renais­sance. Beyond that, mid­dle-aged wom­an­hood is sud­den­ly a hot top­ic in every­thing from Ted Las­so to The Split: Barcelona, while Brid­get Jones: Mad About the Boy is the sec­ond film in the fran­chise to pick up the character’s sto­ry on the oth­er side of 40. Michelle Yeoh seemed to fore­cast the trend when she insist­ed dur­ing her Oscars accep­tance speech in 2023: ​“Ladies, nev­er let any­one tell you you are past your prime.”

It’s refresh­ing to see a uni­ver­sal issue affect­ing women – the seem­ing­ly impos­si­bil­i­ty of bal­anc­ing fam­i­lies and rela­tion­ships with careers – explored frankly onscreen, and Moore, Kid­man and Ander­son are right­ful­ly being recog­nised for their top-tier per­for­mances. But in this trio of roles there is some­thing sus­pi­cious­ly sim­i­lar. All three women are crip­pling­ly afraid that they are no longer desir­able, and all at some point are mocked – not alto­geth­er unre­al­is­ti­cal­ly – for try­ing to main­tain their pro­fes­sion­al stand­ing. Two are will­ing to go to con­cern­ing lengths to chase after the beau­ty or ego asso­ci­at­ed with their youth.

Although there is some truth in these por­tray­als, they seem to echo oth­er films that have come before – espe­cial­ly in their deci­sion to pit old­er and younger women against each oth­er. Hali­na Reijn’s Baby­girl is part of a recent haul of ​“MILF” movies, along­side the likes of Lone­ly Plan­et and The Idea of You. Romy (Kid­man) runs a tech firm, while her intern, Samuel (Har­ris Dick­in­son), begins a streak of behav­iour which sure­ly vio­lates numer­ous com­pa­ny poli­cies, inform­ing Romy ​“I think you like being told what to do” and hit­ting on her in front of col­leagues. It seems telling that when Romy final­ly rec­i­p­ro­cates, it’s when she spies Samuel hook­ing up with anoth­er young intern at the office Christ­mas par­ty, ignit­ing her jeal­ousy. Just a scene lat­er, we see her get­ting Botox.

The Sub­stance is far less sub­tle in its regres­sive posi­tion­ing of old­er and younger women as rivals. Spawned from TV aer­o­bics instruc­tor Eliz­a­beth Sparkle (Moore) after she takes the tit­u­lar sub­stance (a shady new Ozem­pic-adja­cent injectable), 20-some­thing Sue (Mar­garet Qual­ley) is the phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of Elizabeth’s anx­i­eties about her wan­ing beau­ty – just as the con­niv­ing Eve Har­ring­ton becomes the walk­ing embod­i­ment of the­atre maven Mar­go Channing’s ​“age obses­sion” in the 1950 dra­ma All About Eve.

Both films focus on fad­ing stars unfair­ly boot­ed from their jobs because of ageism, while Sun­set Boule­vard (also released in 1950) – arguably the pro­to­type for the ​“hagsploita­tion” genre, which siphons dread from the sup­posed hor­ror of the wrin­kled female body – sees bygone Hol­ly­wood idol Nor­ma Desmond (Glo­ria Swan­son) also under­go beau­ty treat­ments in antic­i­pa­tion of her return to fame. Of course, this path back to glo­ry is a delu­sion: in show busi­ness old­er women can nev­er win. With lim­it­ed roles for women ​“of a cer­tain age” at that time, stel­lar actors Bette Davis and Joan Craw­ford would be fat­ed to play gor­gons and crones for the rest of their careers. It’s trou­bling that 75 years on we’re see­ing near iden­ti­cal nar­ra­tives for female actors, albeit with a more extrav­a­gant help­ing of blood and gore.

As some­one who tries to steer away from the tox­i­c­i­ty of the beau­ty world, it has been dis­heart­en­ing to see these new fea­tures applaud­ed as sig­nif­i­cant­ly diver­si­fy­ing the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of mid­dle-aged wom­an­hood onscreen, or being defin­i­tive por­tray­als of it. Even stranger is many of these films and shows’ mud­dled insis­tence that their pro­tag­o­nists are past their prime. In The Last Show­girl, part of the glam­orous appeal of Las Vegas’ dancers is that they are sym­bols of a lost era. Crude­ly, Ander­son, now in her fifties, is used to sym­bol­ise that obso­lete beau­ty, a sim­plis­tic metaphor unaid­ed by the heavy-hand­ed­ness of the script. Dur­ing an audi­tion tak­ing place after Shelly (Ander­son) is dis­card­ed as the lead of her show, she says of her own appear­ance, ​“dis­tance helps”, before per­form­ing an excru­ci­at­ing­ly bad dance rou­tine. This den­i­gra­tion sits uneasi­ly with­in a nar­ra­tive which insists that these women are beau­ti­ful, all the while work­ing a lit­tle too hard to show them as soci­ety sup­pos­ed­ly sees them – valueless.

But it’s worth recog­nis­ing there are some film­mak­ers for whom a woman’s age isn’t an issue. In Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, Mar­i­anne Jean-Bap­tiste is for­mi­da­ble as the acer­bic Pan­sy, a moth­er and sis­ter expe­ri­enc­ing depres­sion which man­i­fests in bit­ing anger. In oth­er films where age is a top­ic for explo­ration, such as Antonel­la Sudasas­si Fur­niss’ Mem­o­ries of a Burn­ing Body – a fusion of three women’s sto­ries in their 60s and 70s, told with depth, wit and hope – we see that there is a rich­ness and joy to mid­dle and old­er age beyond the shal­low sto­ries which dom­i­nate pop culture.

The pro­tag­o­nist of Sophie Hyde’s Good Luck to You, Leo Grande shares a his­to­ry of fak­ing orgasms with Romy, but this sto­ry, like Fur­niss’, places equal empha­sis on the pos­i­tives of old­er age and its detri­ments. Mia Hansen-Løve’s 2016 fea­ture Things to Come (writ­ten with then-62-year-old Isabelle Hup­pert in mind) also finds free­dom and eupho­ria in the life of a lat­er-in-life divorcee. The lat­est Brid­get Jones instal­ment is refresh­ing­ly non-judge­men­tal about Bridget’s rela­tion­ship with a younger man, and more gen­er­al­ly cel­e­brates the plea­sures of this par­tic­u­lar unique chap­ter in life.

It may be true that not a huge amount has improved for mid­dle-aged women in 75 years, but films rehash­ing prob­lem­at­ic old tropes – even while pro­vid­ing roles for women over 40 – shouldn’t be uncrit­i­cal­ly cel­e­brat­ed. The likes of Fur­niss, Leigh and Hansen-Løve are proof there’s a mid­dle ground – and that age real­ly is just a number.