Are middle-aged women absolute horndogs and does that make for good box office? That’s what Grazia wondered recently, asking if the film industry is finally “embracing midlife sex”. This proposition turns on three films – two starring Nicole Kidman and one with Anne Hathaway. In A Family Affair, Kidman is a writer who starts a relationship with her daughter’s boss, a film star 16 years younger. In the imminent and thigh-rubbingly anticipated Babygirl, Kidman’s character, a CEO called Romy, has a torrid affair with an intern. In The Idea of You, Hathaway’s Solène starts sleeping with a boyband star after taking her teen daughter to meet him.
So, does this constitute a Milf renaissance? Arguably it’s more of a cougar-naissance (to be pedantic), but the point is that there are older women on screen expressing and acting on desire, and this is being represented as transgressive (in a titillating way), but also straightforwardly hot. Especially Babygirl. “Rarely do we see midlife women in explicit sex scenes like this,” Grazia reports breathlessly, highlighting a scene where Romy masturbates alone after sex with her husband, as well as the playful BDSM dynamic between the leads.
