GOLDEN YEARS - Mark Reviews Movies

Golden Years, Music Box Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 22, 2024

The husband has turned 65, so now, it's time to retire from the company where he has worked for nearly half his life. The wife is excited about the prospect of having him around, to help with the chores and to finally have some of the adventures they couldn't do in the past. From this setup, it may seem as if Golden Years will head in one direction, even and especially after it becomes increasingly clear that these two characters have very different ideas about what this chapter of their life together and their lives as individuals should be.

The central conflict of Petra Biondina Volpe's screenplay is that simple, but to its credit, the film lays bare the complexities of a difference of opinion that becomes an emotional impasse. Opposites may attract in early love, but can two very different people with two distinct notions of what's important in life and how to experience it best maintain a marriage for several decades?

It's not as if Peter (Stefan Kurt) and Alice (Esther Gemsch) don't love each other. After all, they have been married for more than 40 years, live together in comfort and domestic tranquility in a Swiss suburb, have raised two children who are now adults with their own issues, and, if they don't appear too joyful around each other, are generally content in sharing each other's company. It would be a mistake to call either of them miserable or even unhappy in this marriage, but something is definitely missing.

Director Barbara Kulcsar plays much of this for comedy, and it is genuinely funny in believable, understated ways. Alice, for example, does expect Peter do his share of the housework, now that he has nothing to do but sleep late (which she doesn't allow, even on his first morning without having to go to work) and sit on the couch all day. There's something charming about the continued laziness he shows by running the vacuum over the same spot while trying to finish some video on his tablet.

The plot here is surprisingly flexible, even though it initially possesses the easy comfort of a sitcom, appears to establish a pretty clear situation for the couple to go through, and doesn't seem to take this relationship in stasis too seriously. The setup has the couple's adult children, Susanne (Isabelle Barth) and Julian (Martin Vischer), buy their parents tickets for a cruise. Alice can't wait to go, but Peter is hesitant. One of the subtler details that gives us a sense of both the status of this marriage and Alice is how often the wife reflexively finds herself trying to gauge her husband's reaction to things. She's not looking for approval but simply searching for any sign of what she can anticipate from Peter in the near future.

Things change suddenly when Alice's best friend collapses on a hike and dies. Alice learns that her friend had a decades-long affair with someone in France. Reading their love letters, Alice realizes how little passion, if any, exists in her marriage, because it's not as if Peter is using any time in his newfound freedom to rekindle the couple's sex life. Meanwhile, Peter becomes obsessed with exercise and his diet, suddenly deciding to become vegan and doing the math of how many years he might gain from daily bike riding.

The cruise, of course, is the main plot thread—at first, at least. It's complicated by the fact that Peter invites the friend's widower Heinz (Ugeli Jäggi) to join them, without asking Alice if that's something she would want. The comedic material continues, as Heinz becomes a third wheel (There's a hilarious bit involving a boarding photo that becomes more pathetic with each move) and the couple's supposedly romantic vacation resulting in them spending more time apart.

Something has to give, and this is where Volpe's screenplay starts to reveal that it's a bit more than a breezy situational comedy about a vacation gone awry. Those little details of characterization, such as Peter's obvious existential crisis and possible depression after the friend's death, and performance, such as those quiet looks from Gemsch, aren't just the foundation for jokes, as it turns out. They're vital elements to showing us just how far removed these two characters, who have spent multiple decades together in close physical proximity, are from each other, and the story refuses to simply let the status quo remain.

It delves into the ramifications of those feelings, and impressively, the filmmakers do so without losing the material's light touch. It's still funny, in other words, but we're now watching the possibility of a long-standing marriage's collapse in quick order. The story is generous in giving equal time and weight to both Alice and Peter's respective concerns, fears, and sense of being unfulfilled in much more than just this marriage. The film doesn't judge or take sides, because it sees—while Gemsch and Kurt perform—these characters as relatable and flawed people, desperate for and deserving of even an idea of what happiness could be.

Without saying too much, Golden Years is also and plainly a comedy because it possesses a happy ending. That might not seem possible, given the depth and extent of how very different these two characters are and constantly reveal themselves to be, but this story acknowledges and finds a way to embrace that notion. Plus, one's idea of what a happy ending should be for these two might not line up with the reality presented here.

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