Film Review – GOLDEN YEARS (2024): A Different Take on a Coming-of-Age Story

Golden Years Film Review

Golden Years (2024) Film Review, directed by Barbara Kulcsar, written by Petra Biondin Volpe, and starring Esther Gemsch, Stefan Kurt, Ueli Jägi and Elvira Plüs. 

Golden Years (2024) is a comedy directed by Barbara Kulcsar and written by Petra Biondina Volpe. Its unique take on married life after retirement makes the audience ask themselves important questions. What makes long-term domestic relationships worthwhile, why do we pressure ourselves to create them, and what is the value of formulaic thinking when it comes to aging? One cannot help but compare the film to Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out (1915). As opposed to the novel, Volpe writes a journey of self-discovery in a woman of 65 to show that the joys of novelty and adventure are for any age. I love when a film utilizes a literary convention, in this case a bildungsroman, and does something new with it: Who is to say that self-discovery is only about “maturing” and not about packing the RV and doing ‘shrooms? Similarly, the film takes the character of “a senior citizen now living on a fixed income (in this case a pension)” and thwarts the expectation that this person lives a “fixed life.” While the story’s focus on the fate of a marriage after professional retirement does seem a bit narrow and repetitive, these shortcomings which affect the interest in the film are what help the narrative both make its commentary on the pressures inherent in lifelong monogamy and make Alice’s (Ester Gemsch) liberation all the more poignant.

The comedic elements of the film are well done and certainly work within the genre through several unusual techniques. It should be mentioned, however, that the looming ghost of Magali (Elvira Plüs) weighs on everyone and takes away from the dark comedy of her death and rather gives the film a depressing tinge. Despite this backfiring, or, the failure portray Magali as the catalyst or inspiration for Alice’s freedom, Magali’s death is one of several examples of how the film deals comedically with otherwise somber material. To further exemplify, another film would probably have struggled to—in a lighthearted manner—explore spousal abandonment, alcoholism, and childhood irony-poisoning and detachment because of smartphones, but Golden Years does so in one short scene. Yes, it is true that the film demonstrates Alice’s grief as she notices her incompatibility with Peter (Stefan Kurt) and his preferences for a vegan, homebody, adventure-free life. Nevertheless, the film focuses on the possibilities that open up for Alice as she dares to live her own life through a series of escapades. I would call this detour another element of comedy with the goal of making the audience aware of how toxic and stifling arbitrary expectations can be. While there are certainly moments of laughter in this film, good comedy causes us to reflect on the parameters in which we force ourselves to live regardless of the given atmosphere in the art form. Some people, like Peter, are content within limited spaces, but the film shows that once someone like Alice, who has opened her mind beyond her body’s time on earth, finds the freedom that follows addicting.

More dynamic storytelling techniques, less generic writing, and more attention to detail would have increased the film’s impact. The cruise ship was a missed opportunity for its metaphorical value as a journey of self-exploration. Alice ended up abandoning the ship she was so keen on boarding. Her lack of protest at Heinz (Ueli Jägi) joining them did not fit her character and made the ship seem more like a prison than a vehicle to freedom. Perhaps that was the point, but the symbol-shift happened at the expense of solid characterization. The script could have improved in its timing. When she asks Peter, “Do you not find me sexy anymore?” off the heels of discussing the topic of sexless marriages with Suzanne, it comes across as weirdly cheerful when we know that Peter’s satisfaction with asexuality causes Alice pain. In regard to details, the cinematography in the scene with substance use was literally blurry, giving the suggestion that the threesome sex which happened sprouted from blurry consent as well. Alice is supposed to be empowered by these novel experiences; more care should have been put into how the sex scene was portrayed in order to maintain consistent messaging about Alice’s voyage out. Similarly, when she comes across the women living as a group in France, their portrayal as “anticapitalist, anti-patriarchy lesbians” was surprisingly lazy. Comedies are known to treat stereotypes as manna, but I would have expected more from a film which otherwise deploys the comedic genre through intentional and refreshing methods.

Rating: 7/10

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