gppbet At the Movies, the ‘Older Woman’ Is Growing Up

Updated:2025-01-12 02:54    Views:83

The older woman has been very busy lately. By “older woman,” I am referring to the cinematic figure who is defined by her sexual and romantic relationships with younger men. Depending on your own age, you may know her as the “cougar,” the “Mrs. Robinsongppbet,” or the joke about “your mom.” Now she is the protagonist. And she has never had so many scene partners to choose from.

Let’s review her banner year. In a succession of streaming romance films, she was wooed by a boy-band member (“The Idea of You”), an action movie star (“A Family Affair”) and a finance bro (“Lonely Planet”). For Christmas (having been very good all year), she got a starring role in the erotic thriller “Babygirl” as a robotics company executive who fell into a submissive sexual relationship with her new intern — and fixed her life.

ImageIn the prestige Apple TV+ series “Disclaimer,” an investigative journalist meets a young tourist on vacation.Credit...Apple TV+, via Associated Press

The bounty of the older woman’s recent plots, and the complexity of her new arrangements, come as a thrill, and a relief. For so long, the movies have flattened her into a villain or reduced her to a joke. They have paired her with weasels and virgins. She has been made to manipulate young men because she is pathetic or insane. She was less a character than a stand-in for the movie’s themes — a symbol for some form of generational rot or another.

Now, she can still be a monster (as in Catherine Breillat’s “Last Summer,” where she is a defense attorney with a sadistic streak who pursues her teenage stepson). Occasionally she’s a victim (as in “Disclaimer,” the limited series about an investigative journalist ensnared by a depraved teenage tourist). But increasingly she is a person in a nuanced relationship. Her personality has been cleansed of the too-obvious psychological tics (alcoholism, narcissism, delusion) used to explain her unseemly propositions. These days, it is often the young man who comes on to her. He has become the blunt tool for revealing the depths of her shifting character.

ImageIn the 1927 silent film “Cradle-Snatchers,” a trio of wives who pay young male escorts to make their husbands jealous.Credit...Fox Film

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Among national universities, Princeton was ranked No. 1 again, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. Stanford, which tied for third last year, fell to No. 4. U.S. News again judged Williams College the best among national liberal arts colleges. Spelman College was declared the country’s top historically Black institution.

Calls for school crackdowns have mounted with reports of cyberbullying among adolescents and studies indicating that smartphones, which offer round-the-clock distraction and social media access, have hindered academic instruction and the mental health of children.

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