Review of 45 Years (2015) by Stevesandberg — 05 May 2016

I have to admit to being disappointed by this film, and also thoroughly surprised and bemused by its composite rank at the top of the critical ratings. It's a very well-acted picture, but with the skillful acting in the service of a slim story premised on the idea that a woman (Charlotte Rampling) could be married to a man (Tom Courtney) for 45 years without ever sensing that he had had a previous love.

This seems naive. Furthermore, although the embers are obviously dimmed in old age, you don't get the sense that this relationship was ever so romantic that it would have blinded the woman to the husband's secret for very long.

Theirs has been a marriage of companionship and mutual comfort, not passion; without passion, there is no plausibility for her failure of perception. It was only when Rampling surreptitiously viewed some decades-old slides of the young woman taken before her tragic death that I personally felt any sense of dramatic involvement with the movie.

The earthy, sensual face that stares out at us in those photographs, Rampling's diametrical opposite in every way, was very well-chosen; and in those moments you do get the sense that she would have been a much better match for Courtney….

. But in general I found thin reasons here to justify the near-cosmic rating.