Be it a quirk of timing or the invisible hand of trend cycles, Hollywood seems ready to reconsider the idea of the “older woman”. A wave of age-gap romances have brought the traditionally objectified mommy-age lover into the mainstream this year, including Anne Hathaway’s tryst with a boybander in The Idea of You; Carol Kane’s free-spirited grandmother involved with a decades-younger widower in Between the Temples; and Nicole Kidman’s transgressive dalliances in both A Family Affair (with Zac Efron’s movie star) and the forthcoming Babygirl (with Harris Dickinson’s intern). And that’s not to mention the weirder, psychosexual French version – a 50ish lawyer seducing her gangly teenage stepson – in Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer.
Now Lonely Planet, a Netflix film from Susannah Grant, writer of Erin Brockovich and most recently the co-creator of the underrated series Unbelievable, continues what Vulture’s Rachel Handler has termed “the year of New Milf Cinema” with a travel romance that exceeds Netflix’s middling expectations.
