Age Gap Romances

Julio talks about The Idea of You and A Family Affair, their similarities, their contrasts, and the curious thing about them being age gap romances. 

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Transcript

Spoiler alert, if you've not read, watched or listened to the media content discussed in this episode, it will be spoiled for you.

So please refrain from doing so until you have consumed said content.

Thank you.

This is Julio's Corner, my corner of the internet, where I talk about whatever is on my mind.

Usually, I'll talk about TV shows, movies, or whatever new content has taken my interest.

This episode is being recorded on Sunday, July 21st, 2024.

And today's episode will be more, will be back to form, because we are gonna be talking about movies, in this case, it's going to be two rom-coms, with an interesting twist.

Well, maybe not interesting, but they are age gap romances, as I like to call them.

But first, some house cleaning.

Just wanna do a quick wrap up of the Euros and Copa America, since I did bring them up so many episodes already.

Might as well finish it, get some closure for those out there that were not watching it and were wondering what happened.

The Euros, the end result is what I wanted.

I wanted Spain to win because I felt they were the better team, and they did.

They won the Euros fair and square.

And yeah, England has nothing, no one to blame, but themselves for playing a conservative, defensive style of football.

Whereas Spain dominated, I think, 70% of the possession of the ball, and they were constantly pressing high and attacking.

There were a couple of moments where England would take the advantage, but it was really a no contest for Spain.

They were going to win it.

They just had more opportunities of attack, more scoring opportunities, and they took advantage of them, and the better team won.

Now, the Copa America is another story.

Now, unlike the Euro, which I was able to watch with no problems, I believe I was recording the last episode as it was happening.

So, well, maybe not, because I was recording on a Saturday night.

I don't remember now.

Maybe when I was editing, that's probably what happened.

The game was happening as I was editing the episode.

So, by the time I finished editing the episode and I went online, the result of the game was already spoiled for me.

So I had already found out that my team Colombia lost to Argentina.

Now, it is unclear to me, because I didn't watch the game, it's unclear to me if Colombia did not buckle under pressure and let them win.

I would think that's not the case since the game went to extra time.

So for me, that tells me that it was a pretty even match for the most part, because no one was able to score all the way until they got into extra time, and then Argentina scored and won the game.

So congrats to Argentina for being the defending champs, and winning a second time.

Sadly, Colombia could not make history.

But it is what it is, and it's time to move on.

So the movies in question that we are going to talk about, the first one, well, I'm not sure exactly about the order of it yet, but there's one on Netflix called A Family Affair with Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, and Joey King.

And then there's The Idea of You with Anne Hathaway, and I don't know the names of the other two actors and actresses in that film.

Oh, also Kathy Bates is in A Family Affair.

So Family Affair has a pretty stellar cast.

The Idea of You, Anne Hathaway is the only real known actor, so to speak.

So anyway, moving on.

So they're both age gap romances.

Being that the female lead or the love interest is a much older woman, and the man who's interested in that woman is much younger in age.

Roughly, I want to say between 15 to 20 year age difference between the actors and actresses.

In A Family Affair, Zac Efron is in his 30s, Nicole Kidman is in her 50s.

In Anna Hathaway's film, she turns 40 in the film, and I think she is in her early 40s actually, and the actor interested in her is the character is 24.

I think he's in his 20s, I'm not exactly sure if he's exactly 24 or whatever.

But yeah, so there's like a 16 year more or less age gap, age difference between those two, and more of a 20 year difference between Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron's character.

So, the similarities, right?

As I mentioned, they're both age gap romances.

They both have the female, the love interest is a female, and is the older one in the relationship.

And both females are also single mothers in the films.

But that's pretty much where the similarities end.

They both take different approaches to this premise.

Family Affair is a little campier.

It's more haha than so romantic, whereas The Idea of You is definitely more sentimental and more heartfelt.

How do I go about this?

I've got a lot of notes written down, so I don't lose my train of thought.

But yeah, I guess we'll go with...

I'm just going to go back and forth, I guess.

So in A Family Affair, one of the different approaches is that A Family Affair is mostly...

The main character in that film is actually the daughter, played by Joey King, who's in her twenties.

She's the personal assistant of this actor who's very narcissistic, who's a big narcissist.

I'm having trouble saying that word for some reason.

So Zac Efron plays this narcissist of an action hero actor who made his career with this long running franchise of action films of this character he plays.

I think it's Ajax.

I don't remember.

And I believe it's Ajax, because the mother wrote about Greek mythology and she kept bringing in moments about the real myth of Ajax.

And then she ends up helping punch up the script of the movie.

But anyways, going off tangent.

So as I was saying, A Family Affair focuses more on the daughter, Joey King, and how she feels, how their relationship is affecting her life.

Because she's in her 20s, she basically does everything for this guy, including playing wingman to his breakups.

So she'll be the one who, for the most part, will be the one who would deliver the news that the actor is no longer going to see them, and then would give them this constellation prize, which is a diamond ring.

So because of this, knowing how he is with women, and also her own tumultuous, tenuous relationship with the actor, because she signed up to be his personal assistant with this promise that he would help develop her, because her end goal is to become a producer of films, and this was supposed to be a stepping stone, and she's been working for him for a number of years.

I forget how many.

She brings it up multiple times in a movie, and it's been a few weeks since I last saw it, so maybe two weeks.

So anyway, my memory is a little shoddy, but the point is, she hasn't, her career hasn't gone anywhere.

She's been stuck as this personal assistant, and part of the reason is because she's so good at her job that he doesn't want to lose her as his personal assistant, which is why she hasn't moved up or anything.

And because of that dynamic in their relationship and knowing how he is with women, like he doesn't ever, he's not into long term, he's into the fun honeymoon phase of the relationship, and then as soon as it's leading to possibility of getting serious, he breaks it off because he's not about getting committed.

He's about just having fun and living in the moment, and then once things try to get too serious, he's moving on to the next girl.

So now that he is dating, he meets her mother and now wants to date her, naturally she's angry about that because she knows how he is with women and she doesn't want her mother to get hurt.

And on top of that, you know, it's her mother dating this guy.

It's like there's just too many negative connotations involved in her head to wrap her head around it.

And they don't really, because as I said, the movie is more centered around her and how the dynamic of that relationship affects her.

You don't really get to see how the romantic relationship builds up and you don't see why they're so serious about each other.

It just looked at first like physical chemistry because, you know, Zac Efron's character finds Nicole Kidman hot and she obviously finds him hot because he's young and, well, his character's name is Chris Cole and Nicole is Brooke Hardwood.

So Brooke Hardwood obviously sees Chris Cole as this young, nubile, high, you know, full of energy, full of life stud who's interested in her, which is flattering and also sexy to her.

And he sees this mature woman who still looks young-ish and, you know, it just checks off all his boxes.

And apparently there is, an emotional connection does develop, but we don't really see that.

We're just told by him and by her whenever she speaks about the relationship with, because she speaks about it with Kathy Bates, which is Joey King's grandmother, and Nicole Kidman's mother.

Well, mother-in-law, because she was the mother of her husband who passed away.

So because of that, I feel like, you know, it's a rom-com, so you're going to suspend your belief anyway.

And even the ending of A Family Affair is a lot campier.

You know, she eventually realizes that, you know, she's being a little bit unfair.

She should let...

You know, they're both grown-ups, and also she gets the...

And I'm losing myself again.

As their relationship was getting serious, and he showed up for...

I forget if it was Thanksgiving or Christmas with the family.

Joey King's character, what's her name?

Zara Ford, she sees the box with the ring in his bag, so then she completely blows up their relationship by bringing up, like physically showing the ring to her mother, letting her know the significance of said ring, and so on.

I think it was Christmas, because they gave out Christmas presents, so probably Christmas dinner.

Anyways, after blowing up their relationship, and not speaking to her mother for a while, and being on bad terms with everyone all around, eventually she has a come here moment or whatever, because she also realized her friend had problems, and her friend never told her about it, because she's too self-centered, and it was too much in complaining about her life and expecting people around her to focus on her, instead of making the relationship more of a two-way street.

So anyway, she makes amends with her friend, and she's still working with Chris Cole, I think that's his name, right?

Yeah, Chris Cole, Zac Efron's character.

And she eventually hears his side of the story, that like, okay, so yes, he did have that moment of like, oh, I have to break this off, because he's been doing it so long, it became a bit of a habit.

But as he was going through the motions of getting the ring, putting it in his bag and everything, he realized he didn't want to do that.

He was more, because then he made his really personal, heartfelt Christmas gift for, oh man, for Nicole Kidman's character, for Brooke Harwood.

And he realized that, no, he doesn't want to end the relationship.

He actually wants it to continue.

But he didn't explain any of this to Joey's character, and she found the ring and blew it all up.

So in Hollywood fashion, being that she's the main character, really those other, Zach and Nicole are more supporting roles, she's the one who saves the day.

And she does it in a very Hollywood way.

She basically rents out this grocery store, and she has her grandmother trick her mother into going to that place to buy a specific type of melon, and Joey brings Chris Cole over there for some prefabricated reason.

And then, oh, look at this.

We're both here at the same time.

What a coincidence.

And then as they rekindle makeup and kiss the makeup, she sets off special effects in the grocery or whatever.

I think she had the hoses going, and maybe she made snow come down.

I forget what it was, but with dry ice.

Point is, she fixed the day, and she did it in a very Hollywood way, which isn't realistic, but it's a rom-com.

Who cares?

So that's the breakdown of A Family Affair.

So now, The Idea of You, you have 24-year-old pop star, you have 40-year-old art gallery director.

Okay, the other similarities that I forgot.

The mothers in both parts have a bit of an artistic bent.

Nicole Kimmon's character is a writer, and Hathaway's character is an art gallery director, so she's involved with art.

The other one was a writer.

Zac Efron's character is an action hero, so he's a celebrity, and in this one, 24-year-old pop star.

So both celebrities, but in a different venue.

One also older.

One's an older action hero, so not really a key demographic of teenagers, but the 24-year-old pop star, he does have a teenager demographic, and that plays into the story a little bit.

So Joey King is in her 20s.

The daughter in The Idea of You is a teenager.

She's in high school.

I think she's in her senior year, maybe junior year, and she was a fan of the boy band group that this guy was in, but that was seventh grade.

And now she's more into St.

Vincent and feminist indie female artists, as she described it in the movie.

And I keep saying and...

So the ex-husband bought these Coachella tickets for her, for their daughter, to go to Coachella and see this boy band in the meet and greet.

Not realizing, because he's a stereotypical divorce father in Hollywood films, because he cheated on the mother, left them, and he was always more focused on himself to not really be connected with his daughter and everyone.

So he doesn't know that his daughter is no longer interested in this boy band.

This was like when she was in seventh grade, and she's a high school student, so she's completely over it.

Well, at least that's what she says.

But she still appreciates it somewhat.

Because in the movie, it is a very popular boy band group, so think, I don't know, BTS.

What boy band groups exist nowadays?

I can only think of like the 90s, so like NSYNC or Backstreet Boys.

So yeah, my references are dated, but I'm an old man, I'm not a teenager.

Anyways, so they go to Coachella.

Well, the father was supposed to bring them, but then, of course, in typical, stereotypical fashion, like I said, he's not connected with them, he's more focused on himself.

A business meeting popped up, so he now is throwing all this stuff on Anne Hathaway's character to not do it when she already had made plans of her own, because this birthday party celebration thing was supposed to be a moment where the father can reconnect with her daughter and have a bonding experience because he doesn't really do much of that with his daughter.

But in the end, he chooses his career over his time, spending quality time with his daughter and throwing all of that on the mother, Anne Hathaway.

So Anne Hathaway goes to Coachella and through some mistake, not mistaken identity, but by mistaking his trailer for the bathroom of the Coachella facilities, they bump into each other and that's how they first meet.

And her not treating him like a celebrity, but like someone who was in line at the bathroom before her.

And that first impression intrigued him, because he's used to seeing people that are starstruck or seeking him out because he's a celebrity.

Whereas she wasn't looking out for him, didn't at first know who he was until he mentioned his name.

Well, actually he mentioned his band.

And so she immediately knew his name, because she's the mother of the daughter who used to be a fan of that boy group.

And she is connected with her daughter, so she knows all the names of the people in the boy band.

So anyways, the concert continues.

They go to the meet and greet.

He communicates with her a little more, tries to get to know her, finds out about where her art gallery is located, proceeds to visit her at the art gallery, buys all the stuff to impress her.

And eventually convinces her to go out to dinner with him.

And the things progress from there.

And so as the relationship is progressing, at least in private, he feels a little slighted because she is the one who insists on keeping it a clandestine relationship, keeping it hidden from the public eye.

She hasn't told her daughter about them yet.

Her daughter is now in summer camp.

So plenty of time to go to his European tour and be with him there while she's busy in summer, you know, the daughter is busy in summer camp.

There doesn't need to be at home to take care of her.

But she still keeps in touch with her.

Like they have nightly or daily calls with each other, FaceTime calls with each other.

And neither of those times does she ever bring up the relationship that she's having with this guy, this boy band singer whose name is, and I'll bring that up, his name is Hayes.

So Anne Hathaway's character is Solaine.

So it's like a French name, Solaine.

Her daughter is Izzy and Hayes is the lead singer of the boy band group.

So anyways, as she's in this European tour with them, having this tryst, the other boy band members also have their own dates, but they're groupies, they're just there for the fun and they're okay with being more casual.

Whereas, Celine, I'm probably butchering the pronunciation of that name, Celine, we'll say Celine, Celine is seeing this as a more serious relationship, even though at the same time that she sees her with Hayes as a more boyfriend and girlfriend type relationship, she's still also keeping everyone in the dark about it.

And he feels some type of way about that, and he doesn't try to show it, but at the same time, he does passive aggressively say some remarks about it.

Oh, are you embarrassed about this?

What's this about?

Why doesn't your daughter know yet?

And things like that.

But anyways, the other boy band members are not impressed with this development.

And they, well, one of them and the other two females, the female groupies, bring up his past and how.

Because there was a song that he dedicated to her at Coachella.

And the guy mentions that, yeah, that's their move.

They always like to, if there's a person that's trying to pick up at the concert or wherever they're playing, that's the move that they make.

They'll pretend that, okay, I know this is not what we rehearsed, but I need to get the song out and dedicate it to the person that they're interested in to win them over and so on, to woo them.

And then, of course, the groupies then say, yeah, this is all for fun, essentially, and that there's going to be an expiration date on this affair.

And Solene doesn't take it to heart, or she does take it to heart, I should say, and she's not amused, and she immediately starts setting up plans to leave.

So they have their little fight, and things were said that were hurtful, especially on her side, on her part, talking about how like, yeah, I am ashamed about us, and that's why I'm not letting anyone know, because I am ashamed.

But despite that, trying to keep it clandestine and then breaking it off, during one of their meet their dates, someone was taking pictures of them, and then of course, they got on the gossip rags, and they're exposed.

And at first, the daughter is upset with her, because, not because of their relationship, but because she never divulged it.

And she sort of encourages Solene to get back in a relationship with Hayes.

And for a time, they do.

But of course, the gossip rags just keep piling on, and now, because now that it's more well known, it's more public, she's been identified, her name's been identified, and everyone knows who the daughter is and whatnot.

She's dealing with a lot of harassment at school.

So now this relationship that they're trying to proudly display, like it doesn't matter what you people think, who cares that I'm an older woman and he's a younger guy, like it shouldn't matter.

But sadly, in high school, teenagers can be mean to each other, and her life is becoming miserable.

So because of this, Celine decides to make the sacrifice and once again break them up.

And this time it's not because she's ashamed of them or that she's afraid to admit her feelings for him.

It's because she's a mother.

At the end of the day, she's a mother, and her daughter's happiness matters to her more than her own.

And Hayes cannot be mad at that.

He can't resent this because it's coming from a place of love, of, you know, it's coming from a pure place and of sacrifice.

It's not because, like the first time, she was ashamed of their relationship and was trying to keep it hidden.

No, this is because she's willing to sacrifice her own happiness for the happiness of her daughter.

And so he can't resent that.

So he tries to make an oral agreement, pledge, oath, if you will, that will revisit this relationship in five years.

Because in five years, she will have been done with high school, probably done with college or finishing up college.

You know, she'll be an adult.

My career at that point should be like almost non-existent.

And yeah, it shouldn't be the same problem it is now in five years' time.

But she's like, no, no, no, don't wait for me five years.

If you find someone else in this five-year window that you're putting on yourself, by all means, seek that out, take that leap of faith, and I will do the same.

And of course, she didn't.

She loves him.

So she's not looking to replace him with anyone else in her life.

And so she doesn't in those five years.

But surprisingly enough, he doesn't either.

And he's like finishing up a tour.

So you see him being interviewed at this in this British show on BBC.

I forget the name of the show.

But of course, I'm going to look it up because that's what I do.

Graham Norton.

Yeah, that's what it is.

The Graham Norton Show.

So he was she was on the Graham Norton Show on BBC.

And he's letting and he's, you know, he's making an announcement that, you know, once his tour wraps up, which is going to wrap up in, I don't know, weeks time or a few days, he's going to take a sabbatical in LA.

And Graham Norton follows up like, Oh, really?

Why, why LA?

Why specifically that area of the world is where is your next destination for a sabbatical?

And, you know, he says, yeah, because there's someone there I want to meet.

So obviously they know it's romantic.

They don't reveal the name.

But at this point in time, his demographic is no longer teenagers.

And it's more it's a more grown up demographic and their understanding of people's relationships.

Like, it's not a big deal.

It's not like when he was in a boy band and it's more like how K-pop groups have to deal with keeping their relationships private because their fan base goes goes mental.

If they find out that one of their favorite K-pop artists is involved with someone else instead of being celibate and single and just pure because they're just there to perform and entertain you.

So yeah, so the movie ends with her seeing that interview, getting hopeful.

You know, she's at the gallery and then on the day that he should have shown up as closing hours near, she realizes that it's not going to happen.

But then she hears two people talking and she rushes out of her office.

And there he is talking to one of her assistant and one of her workers.

And then they turn around and they see each other and they exhale like a sigh of relief.

And they have these cheese eating grins and it fades into black.

So, you know, it's a nice romantic ending because, you know, because you get emotionally invested with these characters.

You see the five years.

It's definitely more real.

You see how the relationship develops into what it became.

And you don't really have the daughter involved as much, except for the moments that I've mentioned.

And because of her, they had to break up again.

And, you know, five years later comes goes by and now they're back.

And so, so that's those are the I lost my train of thought.

I knew I did.

But that's how the movie ends.

And so between the two, I think the idea of you is a much is much more my speed because I like I like romance.

And that's a more sentimental, heartfelt romcom.

Family Affair was fun.

But the the romance in Family Affair and The Idea of You is definitely more my speed.

Because you not only saw the physical chemistry, but you got to see how they develop their emotions by divulging a lot of personal stuff with each other.

And it was very believable how their relationship developed and how they saw each other.

Whereas with A Family Affair, you didn't really see that development.

You just had to take it at face value that, oh, no, we're really into each other.

It's not just about sex.

So because of those different dynamics, the endings were different.

Like I mentioned, Family Affair was a little campier with the whole movie type setup at the grocery store for their rekindling of their relationship.

Whereas this one was more a realistic situation.

And because of that, I feel it was just a more satisfying ending for me because of the emotional investment that you developed throughout the film.

And so that's all I have to say regarding these two films.

So take care.

And that wraps the show.

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This means you can share this audio, remix it, do whatever you want, just say where you got it from.

And as always, thanks for listening.