The Sundance film festival revealed a growing challenge to the traditional casting of middle-aged men with much younger women
are anything to go by, the conversation, amplified perhaps by the fact that it frequently plays out on social media, is only set to grow more heated. Another film which flips the gender roles of the traditional age gap,“Do you think it’s weird I hang out with Gary and his 15-year-old friends all the time?” asks Alana Haim’s 25-year-old character in Anderson’s loose-limbed, loping Californian coming of age comedy. Her sister shrugs, noncommittally.
Not before time. “Men on screen have a whole life, and women only have a shelf life,” says Nicky Clark, the founder of campaign group Acting Your Age, which lobbies for age-appropriate casting and representation for older women on screen. “Since the medium began, women were expected to retire at 40 and not do anything particularly interesting if they were working after that age. And that hasn’t really changed.