80 Days

Old lady lesbian movies is one of my favourite subgenres of WLW films. I’ve liked almost all of them I’ve seen. And I think by now, I’ve seen all of them. Maybe this points to a personal bias. Or maybe, the movies are just good. Certainly they cover some ground that the glut of WLW films about younger people can’t or doesn’t cover. 80 Days is the most recent in this subgenre of films I’ve seen. And the streak remains unbroken. I liked this movie a lot!

One great thing about 80 Days is that it has a very overt time frame. The film starts on Day 1 and guess what? It ends on Day 80. Well, technically there’s also an epilogue. The film kicks off when Axun receives a call that her daughter’s ex-husband is the hospital after a car accident left him in a coma. Axun’s daughter won’t visit, nor does the ex-husband have any close family. So, Axun decides to visit the poor man. His room is shared by another coma patient. But this one has a steady visitor, his sister, Maite. Coincidence of all coincidences, Maite and Axun were childhood friends. Maite openly admits she was probably in love with Axun as a girl. Nothing ever became of that relationship then. But now, 50 years later, these two friends reconnect. And maybe there’s still something more than friendship between them.

What I love about movies about older people is that it reminds me, a young person that many things are timeless. Maite and Axun’s relationship is absolutely adorable. It has a feeling of childish innocence to it. Early moments like sharing a dance or spending time outside the hospital have as much weight for these characters as they do in any coming-of-age story. This new relationship doesn’t make Maite or Axun young again. But it does inject some joy and novelty which were long since gone in Axun’s life. Her life was a staid routine with a man who doesn’t see her and perhaps doesn’t love her. But in a hospital of all places, she finds happiness and a new outlook on life.

Axun and Maite are so well matched. Maite’s sunnier, more positive disposition really makes a change in how Axun sees the world. And while this attitude is new to Axun, she meets it and offers it back to Maite. Watching these two characters together is endlessly charming. Their lives are not exciting. They drink coffee and go to movies. But I want to see every bit of it. The way the two women light up in each other’s presence is such a joyous thing to watch.

One idea repeated in the film is that older people aren’t necessarily smarter. They make as many mistakes as they did when they’re young. This is a fun little dissection of a a common trope about older characters; that they’re wise and have seen it all. They’ve maybe seen more, but that doesn’t make them inherently wise. Nor have they “seen it all.” Axun really struggles with the concept of homosexuality. This was something that was simply not an option to her as a young women. And as she aged, she continued to lack any sort of visibility towards queer women. This is the main relationship conflict. Axun struggles to visualize any sort of future with Maite because she’s hardly heard of such a thing. It might be true that older people make as many mistakes. What’s different is that there’s less time to change.

80 Days is such a sweet movie. The two lead characters are so charming to watch together. I could’ve easily watched 800 days of them. Get me the sequel, immediately.

Overall rating: 8.1/10

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