As Anne Hathaway’s new film explores age-gap romance, 50-something Karen Krizanovich, who’s in a relationship with a younger man, says sex is more fun than ever...
You should know that I have a thing about straight noses. And that’s where it started, seeing his attractive classical profile as he walked in front of his desk.
It was a summer afternoon in London and I was interviewing for a job. It wasn’t going well. The whole day seemed a washout except maybe for this handsome guy.
On my way out after the interview, I stopped at his desk. I heard music coming from his computer speakers, and asked if it was the theme from a film I liked. Turns out, it was.
We chatted more about movies. Then, against the odds, I got the job If there’s one thing I’ve learned and we became friends. Little did I know then that the meeting would lead to a relationship. He was good-looking but in his 30s, while I was nearing 50.
Yet when I heard the plot of the new rom-com, The Idea Of You, in which Anne Hathaway plays a 40-year-old mother and divorcée who falls in love with the 24-yearold star of a boy band —in short, beautiful older woman gets together with equally beautiful young man — I was reminded of my own dalliance, and now long-term relationship. In the film, we see that the pop star Hayes Campbell, played by Nicholas Galitzine, is immediately smitten.
Hathaway’s glamorous art gallery owner, Solène Marchand, is bemused but interested, reeling with disbelief at her own feelings. As Solène says to Hayes: ‘If you get a shot at happiness, you take it and I will too.’ Attraction isn’t bound by age. In fact, it can be created by mere kindness and proximity, or romantic chemistry, or all of the above.
Honestly, I didn’t notice his youth. Asking him about that time, he says he didn’t think of me as an ‘older woman’. This wasn’t a case of cradle-snatching; nor was he looking for a cougar.
I wasn’t rubbing my hands together saying: ‘Oh, fresh meat!’ Neither of us was looking for a relationship. It just happened.
The younger man/older woman dynamic has been a popular trope for decades, but traditionally comes with a big old dollop of disapproval. Think The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft.
Yet Hollywood often catches the spirit of the times before the rest of the world catches up, and The Idea Of You ditches the old clichés for a more nuanced approach.
It shows the heartbreaking problems other people cause when they think a woman is too old for her partner.
In the real world now, of course, it’s not so unusu
