To think Colin Firth and Emma Stone in Woody Allen's new movie at 28 years age difference is a little creepy?

[mrsjavierbardem]

I mean I know it's fine and legal, Colin Firth is lovely etc.

But why is it always these minty old buggers and these women who are young enough to be their daughters?
I mean, isn't anyone involved a little embarrassed by this kind of casting?
sigh

I'm only speaking for myself here. But it's not the age difference alone that I'm thinking of, but how this is acceptable and usual for men, less so for women (in HW at least). Also a bit of a 'theme' for Woody Allen, which other posters have explained better.

Lovely bit of condescension there Blunda

Come on ladies! It's cinema. It's "sublimation" of real life. Exageration most of the times.

I think it send a message that is wrong for women to age and it so subtle that it is harder to challenge than more blatant messages.

It's done with casting actresses as mothers of actors when they clearly couldn't be or with a limited age range of actress appearing on screen, later teen to if lucky mid 30's, as only these women exist or are important enough to be filmed or that women older can't be desirable.

Plus it curtails many mid -range actresses careers - as they haven't the star power to act beyond these boundaries in a way that male actors careers aren’t. How is such blatant sexual discrimination a good thing? There are some actors who come into their acting prime later than this window.

There are a fair few films that then make fun of women for taking measures for wanting to remain looking young something the whole industry subtly promotes.

There are other issues with films fact that the same body shape is frequently portrayed as well as – a very limited range of female beauty.

yes it just films - but they are watched and influence entire populations and along with many other things. I won't be marching in the streets about it - but I do feel it's wrong to say it doesn't matter or that it should just be ignored.

Blimunda I would totally agree with you, rationally.... but it's just that it doesn't feel right.
Trying to be as objective and rational as I can but WA will always be horridly creepy to me and I can't help but feel disappointed with Colin for appearing in one of this films.
I wish I wasn't but I am :-(

You said it better than I did lemonsquares, but that's more or less what I was trying to say too

Oh and what LemonSquares says - absolutely.

Long before he was exposed for what he is, I loathed his films. Self-indulgent wank, basically. Endless boring on about New York and tedious middle class people striking poses and whinging about their boring love lives.

I love this thread, my brain hasn't been stretched this far in months!

Of course IRL people are free to mate as they will within the law we would mostly agree.

But it's the message that is sent of these large age gaps - Emma Stone and Colin Firth is 28 years I think. I'm actually wondering about the actor making the decision and wonder whether Firth might have hesitated if he had a daughter near Stone's age: I know he has a grown up son in Canada. It's a very strong message to send women about ageing and it hardens our cultural view of older woman = less attractive. This message leads to low self esteem and some women like Lara Flynn Boyle the Twin Peaks actress and Nicole Kidman on her way towards
destroying their looks with surgery.

We should be teaching girls that who they are is what is important not just what they look like, but we seem to be progressing nowhere except towards teaching girls to find themselves inadequate and hairy. The movie business is deeply involved in these messages I think anyway.

(Also, by the way, Mick Jagger and that ballet lass, is that a 40 year age gap? Oh well, Picasso never went for older lasses.)

But I like some of WA films and I find some creepy.
I think his set up with Mia Farrow was so out of all norms that the blurring of lines is less surprising had they been in a less complex familial set up. They never even lived properly together. I think that weakens ethical relationships up to point.

In the court case the judge I think left a question mark hanging over guilt re the daughter but couldn't pronounce finally on it.

What's interesting is that the pursuit of Soon Yi arguably destroyed a pretty amazing sibling & family group. Surely a great sorrow for all of them, most of all Soon Yi maybe? Maybe getting Allen was worth it but I feel a bit sad for her, as her youth meant that Allen's desire for her may have superseded what a more generous man might have seen as her long term emotional health and familial group. At least the marriage's length is testament to something.

Who knows - Hollywood family life is relatively bizarre.
It's Colin and Emma makes me feel a bit nauseous.

Once an actor agrees to be in one of his films (let alone outright defends him) that's it, for me. Just don't want to watch them again. It does seem an odd career move, defending the indefensible.

i suppose woody allen had a hand in the casting. wouldn't you know!? the king of the creeps.

but yes, I totally agree, even if the man is particularly good looking, a 25 year age gap would just rule him out as a partner like that. When I was 24, I think I would have been a bit repulsed by the thoughts of jiggy jiggy with a man approaching forty, never mind past 50. It just wouldn't have been on the cards.

It disappoints me too that CF would want to be in a WA film, and also that this kind of age gap is featured.

Actually, I'm also a little disappointed in that Colin Firth was in a film in 1989 called Valmont. Not sure how old that would make him but he has a very intimate scene with Fairuza Balk who must have been 15 at the time. It isn't full sex, but it still goes pretty far. I'm sure some people would say it's only acting, but I feel sad about it, that the industry didn't protect Fairuza to a greater degree. It's inappropriate.

The whole industry seems a bit rotten to me. I feel like that watching things like Game of Thrones and the Tudors too. There is so much pressure on actresses to be filmed nude and having fairly graphic sex. I'm quite sure some of the actresses there don't want to be filmed in that manner but everyone else is doing it, they get a great part in return and a role in a hugely successful series. It makes me want to weep.

I was under the impression that Woody Allen essentially casts his films personally, in their entirety.

Blimunda your analysis is moot, because you are treating one film in isolation, rather than WA's body of work or, as others have pointed out on the thread, the systemic practice (of retiring in their 40s, women from roles as sexual protagonists, which equates female worth an attractiveness with youth alone; of casting older men with much younger women; this sits alongside a dearth of heavyweight roles for women) across Hollywood. Given the virtual hegemony of American films, the point is not personal, but political.

I thought most real life Hollywood partnerships were between people of roughly the same age? And then you have ones where the woman is older, like Hugh Jackman's (his wife is 15 years older than him), Jason Momoa/Lisa Bonet (12 years) and Aaron Johnson/Sam Taylor-Johnson's (23 years) which I do find a bit gross as he was so young when they got together.

It seems to be something that Hollywood allows on screen though, presumably on the basis that men watching it will love it, and women watching it will just have to put up with it, and keep lying to themselves that the most attractive thing about a man is his sense of humour

Aside from loving a bit of Colin, I'm also clearly the only person ever in the cinema-going world who liked Match Point. It's one of my absolute favourite films!! I've never watched it with anyone who didn't love it either. Thought it was very clever indeed. I'm obviously more of a knobhead than even I knew

There's no creepy age gap in that one though!

I liked it too, although I do like most of Woody Allens films in general.

somedizzy, Match Point is universally derided as utter shite

(Whispers)

Me too Wigglesrock. But I'm a bit embarrassed by that now as absolutely everyone else seems to hate him.

I know he's a but dodgy- step daughter debacle has proven that- but as he's never been convicted of any crime I didn't know all "right thinking" people were boycotting him til I started reading this thread.

Haha Rooty I know some of the acting is wooden- not least from Old John Rhys-Henry-VIII- but I think it's a really well written and thought provoking story.

Colin Firth is 22 years older the me but I'd ride him like a show pony spectacularly misses point of thread

Argh! She wasn't his step daughter.

He and Mia Farrow were never married and never lived together.

Muffin I don't even want to look at how much younger than me Aidan Turner and Tom Hiddleston are but I'd definitely join you in the pony riding.

Actually just thinking about it there's a twenty year gap between Tilda Swintons and Tom Hiddleston but there was nothing icky about them together in Only Lovers.

Nyn happily Mr Hiddleston is only a year older than me so that's fine but he'd have to wear the Loki horns

Nynaeves, if he was in a relationship with her mother then to all intents and purposes she was his step daughter. They were hardly a fly by night romance, they were together for years and had children together, soon-yi's siblings. The fact that they never lived together means jack shit in terms of legitimising that relationship.

It also grinds my gears when people use longevity as a benchmark for a decent relationship. The fact that they are still together might mean they have a geta, healthy relationship, or it might just as well mean that he groomed her from such a young age that she never had the strength or wherewithal to leave him.

Woody Allen is revolting.

My dp is 18 years older than me, so the automatic "OMG looks older enough to be her dad" thing is somewhat tiresome.

Emma Stone and Colin Firth isn't believable. Emily Blunt and Colin Firth is.

"Nynaeves, if he was in a relationship with her mother then to all intents and purposes she was his step daughter. They were hardly a fly by night romance, they were together for years and had children together, soon-yi's siblings. The fact that they never lived together means jack shit in terms of legitimising that relationship."

Yes, that's what I said. Woody and Mia had children together; adopted some and had their own biological children. Soon yi's siblings.