Age of Consent

A very pleasant surprise. I had expected Michael Powell's last feature to be mediocre at best, with the one selling point of a nude, young Helen Mirren, but it's actually a pretty good movie. Not the director's best, of course, but it's quite sweet and beautiful. James Mason plays an Australian painter who has difficulty perfecting an Australian accent. He flees the city for an island in the Great Barrier Reef, where he can relax and paint. There he meets a 17 year old girl (Mirren in her first film role) who dreams of moving to the big city. He's entranced by her beauty, and agrees to fund her dreams if she'll pose for him, often nude. Despite the lurid title, the film isn't sensationalistic or pornographic. Mason's interest, despite what some of the townsfolk might think, is purely artistic. It's much like the film, actually. You might watch it for the naked lady, but you stick around for the artistry. And Powell's artistry is intact, fully. Besides the enveloping cinematography (not to mention some beautiful underwater photography), you'll find plenty of Archers-esquire touches, like the dog chasing toads out the door. The story is pretty thin, but that's not uncommon amongst Powell's many travelogue films. It's often very funny, especially with Jack MacGowran and Neva Carr-Glynn. Oh yeah, and Helen Mirren, 24, gets naked a lot. That's definitely worth checking out!

A famous painter retreats to a somewhat remote island in Australia's Great Barrier Reef to inspire his creativity and finds a young woman to pose for him. Mason is fine as the painter. In one of her earliest roles, Mirren looks amazingly young and alluring as the object of Mason's desire. MacGowran provides the comedy as Mason's unwanted guest on the island. There isn't much of a plot in this laid-back and light-hearted comedy, but it features a quirky cast of characters and is quite enjoyable. The dog is cute and receives on-screen billing. The island setting is beautifully filmed under Powell's masterful direction.

Never viewed this film before and always enjoy James Mason pictures and was surprised to see that it was showing for the first time on TCM TV and Robert Osborne and Michael Powell's wife gave a review and history of this film. There is plenty of comedy, and a very interesting story about an elderly artist named, Bradley Monahan, (James Mason) who is getting tired of being recognized for his great paintings and wants to find a very quite place where he can create some new paintings and he selects Australia's Great Barrier Reef for his retreat. Bradley soon finds out he is not alone on this island and runs into all kinds of people. However, he does meet a very cute young girl named Cora Ryan, (Helen Mirren) who is only a young teenager and he makes a deal with her to buy her fish that she catches and chicken's that she steals for a living to support her old aunt who loves gin. Eventually Bradley convinces Cora to pose for him in the nude and he draws all sorts of paintings of her. This is truly a great film and I was so glad I was able to view this film which is rarely seen in the United States, enjoy.

He only wanted her for her body--to paint, of course....

I just saw this film and found it absolutely delightful. As others have noted, Helen Mirren is a wonder as a young girl working out the relationship between her body's strength and its beauty, and how each can help her get what she wants. There is one moment, when she takes control of a motorboat after having dumped a would-be lover overboard, when I saw the future Jane Tennison. James Mason is also marvelous as the obsessive painter. The natural setting, on the Great Barrier Reef, is liberating and beautiful but the heart of the movie is the little cabin which goes from a dump to a layered, painted work of art. This man's passion to make things, to create color and line on every available surface, seems to fill the movie's surface too. Near the end, when Cora enters the cabin and we see her surrounded by his paintings of her, the relationship between art and life seems to be a very happy one. It's too bad Michael Powell didn't get to make more films in the 1960s and early 70s. I think that if I could have seen this film at the time it was made (when I was a girl in my late teens, for whom nudity was not an option) it would have meant a lot to me.

Compared to the many classics Michael Powell had previously directed, this Australian film is just a light, piece of fluff, but it is worth watching to see the young Helen Mirren and another solid performance by James Mason, who must have had a particular interest in playing this part as he also co-produced the film. Don't be misled by the title, the issue of sexual relations between an older man and an under-age girl is only really hinted at, the main theme being the need for an artist to find new inspiration. The tone of the film is essentially light, and, for me, the highlight is a couple of hilarious scenes in which Jack McGowran, as Mason's scrounging mate Nat Kelly, meets his comeuppance at the hands of a man-hunting neighbor of Mason's.