OUR SOULS AT NIGHT: A Bittersweet Look At Love & Loneliness

Hollywood has an age problem, especially when it comes to women. The parts for actresses over a certain age are few and far between; once you’re deemed too old to play a sex object (something that happens to women at a far younger age than it does to men), you’re generally only considered for parts playing the mother of said sex objects. From there, the roles steadily dwindle out of existence, a sad reflection of how women’s value in the eyes of men decreases the older they get. Meanwhile, men continue to be cast in the same leading roles as they age, but opposite women who are young enough to be their daughters. To paraphrase Dazed and Confused, the men get older, but the women stay the same age.

So, it’s refreshing to come across a film like Our Souls at Night, a love story starring not just an older man, but an older woman as well. That they are two of Hollywood’s most beloved, legendary stars lends to the film’s already considerable charm. Robert Redford, age 81, and Jane Fonda, age 79, star as two neighbors who start sleeping together platonically when their loneliness becomes too much to bear. At first, their relationship is nothing more than intimate chats followed by chaste nights, but soon, it evolves into something that neither of them expected to feel again in their lifetimes.

Adapted by writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (The Sense of an Ending), Our Souls at Night is a rarity in Hollywood – a mature love story between two absolute equals. It’s by no means perfect, but it is a pleasant reminder that life goes on after seventy, despite what most of Hollywood would have you think.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Widower and retired teacher Louis Waters (Redford) is eating dinner alone, as he has since his wife passed away, when he’s interrupted by an unexpected knock at the door. It’s his longtime next-door neighbor, Addie Moore (Fonda). A widow herself, Addie has grown lonely without someone to talk to and share her bed at night. So, she issues a blunt proposal to a man she barely knows, despite his close proximity for so many years: does he want to come over at night to sleep with her? She’s not interested in sex, she hurriedly tells him; she just wants the comfort of someone being next to her to help her sleep at night. Louis thinks it over, but aware of his own loneliness, he inevitably agrees, and begins sneaking over to Addie’s house night after night.

Despite Louis’ best efforts to keep his nighttime trips to Addie’s a secret, soon the rest of the neighborhood catches wind of the new arrangement and starts coming to their own conclusions about Louis and Addie’s relationship. Louis and Addie breezily dismiss the gossip; happy to have someone to confide in for the first time since their spouses died, they value their new friendship too much to be intimidated by other people’s judgments. They’re old enough to recognize something good when they’ve found it, and to not do anything stupid to jeopardize it. However, that doesn’t mean everything goes smoothly for Louis and Addie – especially when real romance does spark between the two of them.

Old-Fashioned Movie Star Magic

It’s no surprise that Louis and Addie end up falling for each other; as played by Redford and Fonda, they are the two sexiest senior citizens on the planet, let alone on the small-town block where they live. The film’s attempt to frump up the fabulous Fonda in unflattering mom jeans fails miserably, while Redford’s blue eyes, while crinkled at the corners, still sparkle with all of the mischief and magic of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The two of them have lost none of the charisma they brought to the classics of their youth, nor any of the chemistry displayed in their previous on-screen match-ups such as Barefoot in the Park, released half a century earlier. Together, they make Louis and Addie’s burgeoning romance feel effortless and inevitable.

Louis and Addie are so good together that one shudders at the idea of anyone trying to get in the way of such a beautiful relationship. And yet, one realizes that if all that happened in Our Souls at Night was a lovely love story, there wouldn’t be much of an arc to it. As a result, stumbling blocks are thrown in along the way in the form of scandalized neighbors, a health scare that lands one of them in the hospital, and irresponsible children that still need looking after even though they have children of their own, among other things.

Every potential obstacle in the way of Louis and Addie’s happiness is more frustratingly predictable than the last, made all the more annoying because it is impossible to understand why anyone would want to get in the way of their relationship apart from sheer jealousy and selfishness (Addie’s deadbeat son, as played by Matthias Schoenaerts, is particularly obnoxious in his efforts to keep his mother away from Louis, even if he thinks he has a good reason to do so). Better than these scenes of overly manufactured drama are the small moments between Louis and Addie in which they share deeply personal musings with each other about everything from the deaths of their respective spouses to Louis’ bout of infidelity that scandalized the neighborhood so many years ago. All of it winds down to a bittersweet but ultimately realistic conclusion that will leave one feeling both heartbroken and hopeful.

Our Souls At Night: Conclusion

Our Souls at Night could have been too saccharine to swallow, but thanks to Redford and Fonda’s wonderful work, it instead feels as warm and comforting as your grandmother’s chicken noodle soup. It’s also an important reminder that there are still plenty of stories worth telling in the twilight years of one’s life.

What do you think? Should Hollywood invest in telling more stories about older people, especially romantic ones? What other actresses of a certain age would you like to see playing roles like Addie? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Our Souls at Night was released on Netflix in the U.S. on September 29, 2017. For more international release dates, see here.