The Boynton Beach Club
With so much youth culture aimed squarely at, well, the youth, it's refreshing to see a movie that won't make their grandparents cringe. Actually, if Susan Seidelman's comedy ``Boynton Beach Club" does make seniors recoil, it's because so much of it feels all-too-true. Amid the conga lines, desperate hits of Viagra, and nostalgic New Year's sock-hop finale, the movie sincerely captures the poignancy of retired life.
Set in one of Florida's ``active adult" communities, the film is ostensibly a romantic comedy about the divorced and widowed and their quest for new companionship. Dyan Cannon's effervescent Lois gets lucky twice. First, a handsome, self-assured gentleman (Michael Nouri ) asks her out. Then she befriends Marilyn (Brenda Vaccaro ), a neighbor whose husband is run over in the movie's early minutes by a platinum-blond crone, played by Renée Taylor.
Lois encourages Marilyn to get back out there and try dating, but she's not up for it. Neither is Jack (Len Cariou ). He recently lost his wife, but, at the urging of a wry new pal, Harry (Joseph Bologna ), he goes out with a compassionate widow (Sally Kellerman) whom he meets at the bereavement group where nearly everyone in the community converges. Jack and Harry and Lois and Marilyn have some good, frank conversations about what happens to your body in your 60s and 70s, and to your life when, suddenly, after so many years , your best friend is gone.
Seidelman and her co-writer , Shelly Gitlow , make these conversations sting with truth. The movie seems to dovetail nicely with recent reports about seniors living longer than ever and how that's uncharted territory, raising the question of what to do with yourself when you've retired.
The acting underscores a lot of that uncertainty. The seasoned husk of Vaccaro's voice and the contemplative sadness in her face show us what she's thinking: ``What's next?" When Cannon gets her to smile, she's earned it.
And Cannon actually is funny -- not to mention funny-looking. Plastic surgery has left her physically absurd, like a vaguely glamorous R. Crumb cartoon. But her evident humanity and generous joie de vivre save her from seeming unapproachably freaky. Loving her character makes it easy to look at her.
Everyone in this movie really seems to care for one another. There's a wonderful moment where Cariou, who gives the most heartfelt performance, cracks up at Bologna's vulgarity. Bologna is showing him how to seduce a woman, and Cariou looks like he might fall over. Some of ``Boynton Beach Club" makes a good companion piece for a few of the essays about aging in Nora Ephron's very good new collection, ``I Feel Bad About My Neck," although Seidelman's filmmaking, after all these years, is still not as polished as Ephron's prose.
But if Seidelman, who is best known for her 1985 comedy ``Desperately Seeking Susan " has not aged into a subtle or particularly sophisticated director, she does demonstrate thematic gumption and tremendous affection for her characters.
Once the movie ceases accentuating the positive, you realize ``Boynton Beach Club" is not a work of shallow opportunism or annoying cheer. It even transcends the admittedly narrow focus on white, upper-middle-class retirees. These characters' longing for affection and their fear of loneliness are both painfully specific and soothingly universal: We are all Boynton Beach.
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@mac.com.
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