FILM REVIEW - Hope Springs
29/Aug/2012
Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep star in Hope Springs as an older couple looking to reignite the spark in their marriage.
LET’S talk about sex.
Now if the mere mention of the S-word has you all hot and bothered, then brace yourselves for Hope Springs, a taboo-breaking, warts-and-all look at intimacy among older people.
The heartfelt dramedy reunites The Devil Wears Prada director with Meryl Streep, who plays Kay, subservient wife of 31 years to Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones), a pair of empty nesters with a committed but banal marriage.
Each morning, Kay cooks up Arnold’s choice breakfast of bacon and eggs while he scans the day’s paper, scoffs his heart attack-on-a-plate, and takes himself and his briefcase off to work.
The evenings play out the same every time – Arnold falls asleep on the recliner while watching ESPN golf before retiring to his bedroom (the couple sleep in separate rooms due to Arnold’s sleep apnoea, he later claims).
Craving some love, Kay scours the local library shelves in search of a self-help book and finds one by Dr Feld (Steve Carell), a highly regarded marriage counsellor.
Convinced by Dr Feld’s words of wisdom, Kay books herself and Arnold into one of his week-long therapy sessions in the small town of Great Hope Springs in Maine.
In order for Dr Feld’s marital magic wand to work and reignite that lost flame however, Kay and Arnold need to lose their sexual inhibitions.
Streep, Jones and Carell turn in a trifecta of intimate, naturalist performances that mirror the uneasiness with which older generations navigate this taboo subject.
It comes hot on the heels of the Jane Fonda French film And If We All Lived Together – also depicting intimacy amongst seniors – suggesting the bored (mature) housewife is finally having her time in the sun.
Hope Springs
3½ stars
Directed by: David Frankel
Starring: Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, Steve Carell
Reviewed by: Emilia Vranjes.
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