The Boynton Beach Bereavement Club

I saw this movie, shown to a packed house and introduced by the director, Susan Seidleman, at the Philadelphia Film Festival. The audience, including me, loved it. It's funny and touching. It's so rare that a movie portrays the lives and especially loves of the older generations with anything approaching this level of authenticity and charm. Wonderful performances by people you love and don't see enough of. The movie used music to excellent effect as well. A bit of trivia -- the director's mother, who lives in the real Boynton Beach development for "active seniors," suggested the story and actually wrote the first draft of the screenplay as well as produced the movie.

A very enjoyable movie, although if you live in southeast Florida, you may be able to relate to these characters better. The one thing that really got to me was that you were observing characters whose best years were behind them, which were being portrayed by actors whose best years are also behind them, and who you remember thirty years ago. When you see the character portrayed by Dyan Cannon and you remember what Dyan Cannon looked like thirty years ago, you can relate to the character's life situation with even more sympathy and compassion; it's like you really knew what this this character was like many years ago when she was hot and vital and young.

"Old age is not a disease—it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses." Maggie Kuhn

Our perception of seniors in the media has recently been formed by Jerry Seinfeld's parents in a Florida retirement community. They and their aging friends are unrelentingly argumentative, early-bird dining Jewish retirees who look and act old. Susan Seidelman's Boynton Beach Club, however, will have none of that old stereotyping.

As if they were older siblings of the emerging boomer solipsists, these seniors are generally vital, best exemplified by Dyan Cannon's lithesome body but suspiciously tight face, Sally Kellerman's lean and sensual mien, and Brenda Vaccaro's vulnerable enthusiasm. All have reason to be down, for they have lost their spouses but are gaining friends to share their grief with and possibly their lives. Enter the objects of their search for companionship, among others, Joe Bologna's Harry and Len Cariou's Jack, the former a self-proclaimed ladies' man, the latter a shy recent widow lacking skills to cope with mature women.

Unlike the seniors in Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, Manna from Heaven, In her Shoes, and Golden Girls, the principals in Boynton Beach only occasionally resort to jokes about their age or ailments and prescription drugs, the ties that bind elderly everywhere but here are minimized by one reference to Viagra and one to old men who are not even ogling women when they drool. Here the seniors are actively living and loving, something the rest of the world does as well.

This dramedy is as satisfying as an afternoon drink on the veranda with a favorite granddaughter, at which happy occasion there is cause to celebrate being alive and connected between generations with nary a nod to senility.

I saw this movie in Deerfield Beach, Fla. on the same day I visited relatives in Boynton Beach, two towns and about 10 miles north. It was highly recommended by these relatives. The story centers around a bereavement group consisting of seniors most of whom (about 8 out of 9) are females. The movie concerns the problems of dating and (what else?) sex, and it handles this pretty well, following three principal characters through their struggles and doubts. It tackles the problems of getting back on ones feet after the demise of a spouse, and perhaps starting a new relationship. The movie addresses the problems of both the men and the women, and does so thoughtfully and sympathetically. I thought there were a few false moments, contrived for effect, but on the whole it was an honest movie which held your attention throughout. The acting was fine, and I would single out Brenda Vaccaro for her fine acting. I rate the picture as a eight (very good), though I am tempted to add more points because it refrains from demeaning older folks and their problems.

Most of the reviewers here have rightfully stated that this is perhaps the ONLY movie made in the last 30 years about senior citizens in which they are not lampooned. That's true, to its credit. None of them so far though has called out the singular achievement of the film, and that is its very realistic and romantic treatment of Sally Kellerman and Len Cariou's night of passion. American audiences are extremely prejudiced against showing sexuality among its older population, as if it didn't exist. It does, and it does in this movie. Oh,and by the way: Sally Kellerman, at 68 years old, does nudity in the film, thus making her the most senior American actress ever to have done so. Brava, Sally!