Rating: 
Summary: A Love For All Ages
Review: "Innocence" is a movie of a young love that never died. Fifty years ago, Claire (Julia Baker, "My Brilliant Career") and Andreas (Charles Tingwell, "The Castle") were very much in love with one another. However, Andreas's father didn't approve, sent his son away to school, and they never saw one another again. Finally, after concluding a successful career, Andreas reunites with Claire, and they spend a delightful time together, which makes Andreas's daughter happy for him. We find out that each did marry, but Andreas has been widowed for thirty years. When they get ready to part, Claire says they should not see each other anymore, and Andreas agrees.However, they still know each other so well, they know that they won't keep that promise. When Claire keeps leaving without notice, her husband, John (Terry Norris), fears her health may be turning for the worse. He asks his physician son to check her out, and Claire confesses to him about seeing Andreas. When Claire tells John, he thinks she's gone mad. They are still in love, but now that love lacks any sort of open display of it or any intimacy. In fact, Claire points out that it's been twenty years since he's even said, "I love you." Still, she loves that John, for the last 44 years, has been trustworthy and dependable. Writer-director Paul Cox ("A Woman's Tale") makes "Innocence" a film that's full of passion, beauty, and shows love that exists in more ways than one. It even has moments of joyful humor, such as the scene where Andreas and a minister exchange philosophies about life and death. While John has provided a good home, Claire still loves the way Andreas plays the organ. It's a look at roads traveled, and what could have been had those roads not been traveled as the two old lovers make up for lost time. We get many point-of-view shots, especially of Claire, fancying herself as the girl she once was as she spends time with Andreas. There are no bad guys here, either. We see John feeling sad at what he perceives is a lack of faith in Claire, but Claire and Andreas have some share of sadness, too, as they realize what could have been. Yet, they both did well in their marriages. Some parts of "Innocence" are slow, but it's a smart and poignant movie that doesn't take the easy way out of a situation that's not easy for anybody. It's a movie that shows that there's not necessarily one person for each of us. Those who touch us the most deeply are always going to be in our hearts. Nobody's to blame when fate intervenes. Nobody can tell how many times real love, like the one between Claire and Andreas, will find us. In "Innocence," we get a portrait of three people who do the best they know to respect the love that is shared.
Rating:
Summary: staying power
Review: I wanted to see this movie since mid August when I first read a review that clued me in to the moral dilemna that Claire, an attractive woman in her 60's, would face. Her marriage has become a friendship, comfortable for her husband, and, we assume, also for her, until she receives the invitation to meet with her former lover from college days. The question every married person asks him/herself is:"What would I do in the same circumstances?" I was captivated from the beginning by the stunningly honest emotions beautifully portrayed by the three main characters. I did not care for the ending. When my husband asked me immediately after viewing the film,"Would you recommend it to your friends?", I replied,"Yes, but with the statement about my disappointment in the way the dilemna was resolved". However, upon arriving home, we talked intensely about the film, the substance and the messages in the story. I don't remember another film that has "got us talking" in the same way. The film has staying power. I will remember the honesty, the acting, the interesting techniques used to suggest the mental state of the characters. Like many good marriages, this film is not perfect, but very worth seeing and discussing with your partner.
Rating: 
Summary: I'm wiping my eyes here
Review: Innocence is about love. Young lovers who separate, marry others, then come together in old age and fall in love all over again, to the consternation of the husband of one of the pair. And it's beautiful, sad, funny, touching, heartbreaking, thoughtful - well, I can find no fault with it on any level. Beautiful acting, and you feel deeply for every single character.
The film occurs in the present as this charming elderly couple (in their 70s, we must assume) reunite and try to recast their previous love to conform to the truth they have just discovered: that the bond forged in their youth has only grown stronger with the passage of half a century. But to put the present into perspective, there are voiceless flashbacks to 50+ years in the past when they were young lovers - who, for some unexplained reason, chose to part and marry others.
See it. Please.
Rating:
Summary: The beauties of aging
Review: INNOCENCE is sonata about love - first love, interrupted love, lost love, rekindled love. In a gentle manner the tale of a young couple falling in love is revealed in the opening sequences and then we meet that same couple decades later, after time, marriage to other people, family, and the world has smeared that tenuous prelude. The man learns his first love lives nearby, they meet, their love is renewed, and the woman must decide whether to follow her heart ( in her late sixties) or remain in a marriage without passion. Simple story, the details are best left out as they might destroy the impact of this lovely film. It is enough to say that the writer and director have presented a love story about people nearing seventy and have made that story as tender and erotic as if it were about youth. The cycle of life, the consequences of choices, and the rare vision of the dignity of the beauty of aging are of more importance here. In a time when the world population of Senior Citizens is rapidly expanding it is refreshing to come across a movie that makes aging not only OK, but actually a state to anticipate with a glow.
Rating:
Summary: The beauties of aging
Review: INNOCENCE is sonata about love - first love, interrupted love, lost love, rekindled love. In a gentle manner the tale of a young couple falling in love is revealed in the opening sequences and then we meet that same couple decades later, after time, marriage to other people, family, and the world has smeared that tenuous prelude. The man learns his first love lives nearby, they meet, their love is renewed, and the woman must decide whether to follow her heart ( in her late sixties) or remain in a marriage without passion. Simple story, the details are best left out as they might destroy the impact of this lovely film. It is enough to say that the writer and director have presented a love story about people nearing seventy and have made that story as tender and erotic as if it were about youth. The cycle of life, the consequences of choices, and the rare vision of the dignity of the beauty of aging are of more importance here. In a time when the world population of Senior Citizens is rapidly expanding it is refreshing to come across a movie that makes aging not only OK, but actually a state to anticipate with a glow.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful -- The Best Film I've Ever Seen
Review: My husband was overwhelmed and touched by this movie. Simply wonderful. Go thee hence, watch and be happy!
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful -- The Best Film I've Ever Seen
Review: My husband was overwhelmed and touched by this movie. Simply wonderful. Go thee hence, watch and be happy!
Rating:
Summary: Love is a Battlefield
Review: Paul Cox's "Innocence" is a shocking, daring film. Why? Because it dares to show a couple in their 70's in bed enjoying each other and re-experiencing a love that first bloomed fifty years earlier. Andreas (Charles Tingwell) and Claire (Julia Blake) had once been in love but because of family pressure Andreas deserts Claire for college and a subsequent career in music. Both Andreas and Claire marry others. As the film begins Andreas' wife is dead and Claire is in a loveless marriage to John (Terry Norris). Andreas writes a letter to Claire asking her out to lunch and almost immediately they both feel the re-awakening of their dormant love and passion. One thing interesting about their relationship is that they both feel no compulsion to lie about their affair to their families: "We're too old for lies,"
is what they both say. Andreas' daughter is very happy for her father but Claire's husband John is not at all happy. But the nature of John's "unhappiness" at first is more akin to losing a round of golf than a wife. He bascially has treated Claire like a housekeeper and companion. As Claire says: "You don't even raise your head when I come in the door." This is why Claire throws herself headfirst into this affair with Andreas with such exhilaration and abandonement. And it is genuinely thrilling to behold. Julia Blake as Claire gives an inspired performance as Claire.She is very much in the same league as Vanessa Redgrave who she resembles physically and tempermentally. Charles Tingwell as Andreas is overwhelmed by Claire's ardor but is jazzed nonetheless. Tingwell plays the notes of his role perfectly. Terry Norris plays John as a doddering old fool which, of course, he is. "Innocence" deals with some big issues: Love, Religion, Marriage and more importantly Aging. And, to his credit, most of the time Cox is right on with his obsevations. More importantly though, Cox has made us re-think the notion that all passion stops at 40 and reminds us once again that "Love is wasted on the Young." Slightly corny maybe, but provocative in the viewing. Bravo.
Rating:
Summary: Innocence
Review: This film is a beautiful and sensitive handling of elderly love. I think intellegent people of all ages will enjoy it.Kudos to the Australians for making this contrversial film.
Why can't American film makers do intellegent films of this ilk?
Rating: 
Summary: Dumb, dumb movie
Review: This has to be the worst script of any film marketed to intelligent people this year. The characters are forced to make trite comment after trite comment, and it becomes painful to listen to. Sentimental, cliched, maudlin: you can definitely pass this one up.
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