45 Years (2015)

A married couple preparing to celebrate their wedding anniversary receives shattering news that promises to forever change the course of their lives.

Director:

Andrew Haigh

Writers:

Andrew Haigh, David Constantine (short story "In Another Country")

Stars:

Charlotte Rampling, Tom Courtenay, Geraldine James

Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 20 wins & 53 nominations.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Charlotte Rampling	...	Kate Mercer
Tom Courtenay	...	Geoff Mercer
Geraldine James	...	Lena
Dolly Wells	...	Sally
David Sibley	...	George
Sam Alexander	...	Chris The Postman
Richard Cunningham	...	Mr Watkins
Hannah Chalmers	...	Travel Agent
Camille Ucan	...	Café Waitress
Rufus Wright	...	Jake

Storyline

Kate and Geoff Mercer are planning to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary with dozens of friends. The event is to take place soon in the community hall of Norwich, the town near which they live. A week before the party, Geoff receives a letter which, although he tries to hide it, obviously troubles him. When his wife asks him what is going on, Geoff tells her that the body of Katya, his first great love who disappeared fifty years before in the Alps, has just been found in a melting glacier. From then on, Geoff starts behaving more and more strangely and for the first time after so many years Kate asks herself who the man she married so long ago really is.

---

Plot Keywords:

anniversary | death of girlfriend | old woman | old man | dancing | 

---

Taglines:

Do we really know our loved ones?

---

Genres:

Drama | Romance

---

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for language and brief sexuality

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook Official site

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Release Date:

28 August 2015 (UK)

Also Known As:

45 años

Filming Locations:

Norfolk Broads, Norfolk, England, UK

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$65,775, 27 December 2015, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$4,250,507

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$14,186,923

Company Credits

Production Co:

BFI Film Fund,British Film Institute (BFI),Creative England

Technical Specs

Runtime:

91 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

French visa # 143394.

---

Goofs

The morning when Rampling's character enters the kitchen, the clock reads 7:32. Later, being concerned about the passage of time, we see Rampling check her watch as she follows Courtenay into the storage area. Afterwards we see them once again in the kitchen concluding a conversation and going outside to have a smoke. To account for the time that had passed, the clock reads one hour later: 8:32. (Of course the odds are 1 in 60 that it be exactly 1 hour later, but such are the elements of master strokes!) Another morning the clock reads 8:25, and in the afternoon it reads 1:00. There are no goofs with the clock.

---

Quotes

Geoff Mercer: What? You really believe you haven't been enough for me?
Kate Mercer: No. I think I was enough for you, I'm just not sure you do.
Geoff Mercer: Oh Kate - that's terrible!

---

Crazy Credits

The opening credits play like a slide show. Every time before a new name appears on the screen, there is the unmistakable click of a slide projector.

---

Connections

Referenced in Looking (2016)

---

Soundtracks

Rondo in D major, K. 382
Written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Courtesy of Imagem Production Music
Published by Cavendish Music

User Reviews

life is too short to watch this terrible film

Why is it that critics don't give balanced reviews anymore? A film that clearly is trying to work within artistic European cinematic traditions can still be a complete and utter failure as a work of art or even vaguely engaging piece of entertainment.

45 Years is shockingly shockingly bad cinema - and it fails even at the most basic level. Here's why : 1. the structure - its a plodding day by day chronology that could be lifted straight from a book, in fact it's one of those terrible British films that think cinema is just an extension of theatre and literature - wordy, stagey, character- obsessed, overstated

2. the sensibility - we are in the aching melancholy of a Norfolk early spring, big skies, big frames, bleak and lost - it's corny and over done

3. The dialogue - stagey and wooden, really clunky and awful - wayyyy too many words, until about two thirds of the way through, I tried to imagine if I could get the plot and characters if the audio was stripped out and the film broadcast as a radio play, and to my horror I realised there was not one scene where that was not the case. Only when Rampling makes certain discoveries around photographs did the screen do any work that the words weren't. This cannot possibly be good cinema, can it? Please, someone help me out with this one. Nearly all the directing was pretty much indistinguishable from East Enders in style, each clunky chapter was prefaced by a painterly static wide of the landscape which seemed to be the 'this is art-house folks' box ticked, after that it was back to Enders.

4. The acting - Rampling really earns her money rescuing her terrible lines, but Courtenay acts as if just remembering the words in the right order is what he's being paid to do, he does as sort of stroke victim act which is plastered over everything as a nod to yer actual craft, but apart from that he's somewhere else. which brings us to

5. the directing : was there a director on set at any stage? You get the impression an intern was given the job and the director turned up to the edit once in a while. Awful.

6 .The sex scene - there will be people, doubtless, using the word 'brave' here. The word 'foolhardy' which is often close to the word 'brave' is 100% appropriate. Sex scenes are nearly always awfully bad, nearly always superfluous in stagey literary films like these and in this case, really really horrible to look at. My 80 year old Mum, who is an avid art house film freak, said she was nearly physically sick at it and it simply does nothing for the characters, plot, mood, dramatic tension, pace, emotional colour, whatever you hope a sex scene can do for a film - it was like a chef serving up a fried turd at a meal because its 'brave'. Gross of course, but the point is it was a massive mistake that should have been dropped in the first cut

7. Oldster cool - there is a rash of films starring older actors with older character drama at the moment. Marigold hotel etc - its just as knowing and fake as all the other age band films - brat pack, dude films, blah -

God knows who financed this hideous should-not-have-been-made waste of everyone's time, probably some bureaucratic arts organisation that commissions by numbers. Don't go by the critics reviews, please, life is too short to watch this terrible film.