"Cinema is a gift you take home with you," says Dutch director Paul Cox. And after watching his latest contribution to the art of moving pictures, it's easy to understand what he means.
A modest story about true love, old age, and death, "Innocence" is an understated film that's sure to linger in the memory, however slightly.
At the age of 70 Andreas (Charles Tingwell) and Claire (Julia Blake) don't expect to find true love again. Andreas' wife has been dead for 30 years, while Claire is married to John (Terry Norris), a kind man with whom she's shared the ups and downs of family life.
But when Andreas and Claire reunite some 50 years after their teenage love affair, the sparks begin to fly again.
Transported back to their adolescence, the lovers decide that they're too old for games. They embark on a physical relationship with wild abandon while openly admitting their affair to Claire's husband.
But at an age where a broken heart - or even an overly happy one - can prove fatal, what hope is there for anyone to discover a new life?
Challenging our prejudices about the elderly's sex lives, "Innocence" is a touching film about rediscovering the throes of passion at a time when death waits in the wings.
"Love becomes more real the closer it comes to death," muses Andreas in one of the script's stilted - yet curiously affecting - philosophical exchanges.
Best of all, by keeping the disturbing closeness of the couple's rediscovered sexual energy and their impending deaths in sight at all time, Cox faces up to the reality of mortality with a refreshing candour.
It's a slight film, but it's one that you'll be more than willing to take home.
Innocence (2003)
