By Robert Eggers Nosferatu It’s about many things, but perhaps the most urgent is this: Never tell an old, ugly guy you’re interested in him because he’ll never leave you alone.
He will leave the small town he is terrorizing and immigrate – as difficult as organizing a coffin shipment by boat can be – to a new country. He will take part in shady real estate deals. He will bring the plague. He will embarrass you and hurt your friends. She will try to kill your husband but can also have sex with him. He will send you inappropriate messages and chase your dreams.
And don’t stop until he dies.
Perhaps even more immortal than vampires living in the snowy Carpathian Mountains is the never-ending discourse on inappropriate age-gap relationships. (And isn’t every vampire story, at its heart, about an age gap?)
A common break of late: Young people who are involved in these relationships Taking advantage; That these relationships are inherently problematic. Even when both people involved are above the age of consent Decades removed From the age of 18, the younger person often gives birth to children, and the older person of the pair is considered the predator. Examining and questioning relational power dynamics is part of the legacy of the Me Too movement.
At the same time, the age gap has captured the imagination of Hollywood, especially in the last few years. It got some investigative treatment — Todd Haynes’ 2023 film May December More recently, there has been a rise in rom-coms where an older woman pursues a younger man, changing the power dynamics and imagery we usually think of: older men, suffering a kind of midlife crisis, pursuing much younger women.
Entering us in 2025, however, we see a new, somewhat darker group: the age-gap relationship that simply destroys the parentage of romance. Not unlike Nosferatu’s count orlok, old man Queer And Babygirl All three of the following bad movies explore the idea of desire, especially for youth, associated with humiliation. Even if they are centuries older than the object of their desire, these mature partners do not retain power. It’s a reversal of recent discourse – and a return to an earlier stereotype.
Its immortal embarrassment Nosferatu
The difficult, tenuous relationship between depressed 1830s waif Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) and her vampire lover-turned-nemesis Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård, under copious prosthetics) begins with deception.
A few years before the main events of the film, when she was young and clearly a minor, Ellen called on Com to be “a guardian angel, a spirit of comfort, a spirit in any heavenly sphere”. Answering her message on the astral plane is Orlok, a 16th-century Transylvanian noble-turned-vampire who appears to her in silhouette, as a cloaked shadow.
“You are not meant to live. You are not for humans,” she tells him, seducing him and lulling him to sleep. “And will you be one with me forever? Do you swear it?” Believing him to be an angel or some otherworldly being, he agrees.
In it, Orlok takes advantage of their connection — sending her into pleasure and pain, orgasm and convulsions.
Several years later, Ellen is gone from the night when Worlok catfished her. Unfortunately for her, the mustache-less dead Transylvanian hasn’t stopped thinking about their time together, and when he learns she’s happily married to a real estate agent named Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), Orlok plans to move into Ellen and Thomas’ new home in Weisburg. , Germany, physically fulfilled the promise he had made to her years before.
Of course, Orlok represents many metaphors. He can be seen as the embodiment of Ellen’s dark sexual desires, which society rarely accommodates. He may be ashamed of those desires. Perhaps he has mental illness or a death wish. All of these possible, overlapping explanations made Orlok ironic romance icon.
Eggers is purposefully vague regarding the connection between Ellen and Orlok. We know there is pleasure and pain, the desire to violate and welcome, but it is impossible to separate all these parts from each other.
This doesn’t mean Arlok isn’t evil, but his evil doesn’t preclude him from being compassionate.
He spends the entire movie chasing Ellen to make good on her promise. After his tricks bring Thomas to Transylvania, Orlok charms him into signing a strange document that seemingly gives up his wife. (Orlok Hunter enjoys practicing law.) Orlok then stows himself away in his coffin aboard a ship in Weisberg and begins to dream of Ellen, either trying to seduce her nocturnally or tempting her to seduce her husband.
“I’m hungry. Nothing else,” Orlok tells him, trying to explain how he’s not like the other potential vessels of the plague he wants to infect. He is special. “O’er centuries, a loathsome beast I lay in the dark pit ’til you wake me, enchant me, and stir me from my grave. You are my pain.”
For a pre-teen girl all the paperwork, witchcraft and immigration she met on the astral plane was extremely embarrassing. Can you say obsessive? It’s completely understandable why Ellen wouldn’t want to tell her rich friends about the super weird, eternal, plague-carrying Eastern European creep she had a violent, psychotic tryst with years ago. There will be many questions.
For all his dark powers, Orlok is not in command when it comes to Ellen. His obsession with Ellen’s approval, his admission that he wants her as bad as he is, is his undoing. Ellen realizes that in order to free herself from Orlok and save Wisberg, she must convince him that she wants him the way he wants her. As the sun vaporizes her, she squirms and liquefies in pleasure, still believing he wants it as badly as she does.
Queer And Babygirl Too bad!
The pathetic Count Orlok is not unlike Daniel Craig’s Lee Inn Queer. William S. In the film adaptation of Burroughs’ novel, Lee chases the icy Allerton (played by Drew Starkey) in and out of the gay scene of 1950s Mexico City. Lee’s day doesn’t begin until she sees the young man and doesn’t end until she says goodnight. Lee can’t even enjoy the time they spend together because he’s too worried about when they’ll see each other.
A discussion of their relationship. Lee struggles with both her own and Allerton’s notions of sexuality and companionship. Lee is unhappy, and we see the link between his suffering and drug use; How much comes from his eccentricity is unclear. Allerton represents a kind of revelation, a possibility that Lee doesn’t have to be so alone. That’s why he’s so important and why Lee is so invested, even addicted.
What Allerton sees in Lee is harder to see, A man who is often sweaty, tired, drunk and obsessive.
In an effort to solidify what they have, Lee invites Allerton to travel to South America on his dime. He begs for a chance to throw money at their relationship, only to be shunned and teased throughout their journey.
The further Allerton moved away, the more Lee humiliated himself. He’s at the bar because he thinks Allerton might show up. She sits at the window hoping Allerton will walk by. He looks at the moon they share. Under Luca Guadagnino’s direction, that desperate, earnest longing never comes off as sympathetic—the way it might in a conventional romantic story.
Queer A little suspension of disbelief is required. Craig is handsome and (along with everyone else) Beautifully styled. How pathetic can a beautiful person in a beautiful movie really be? But Lee wants to be seen as someone who resembles the way we used to think of single, bad, older men before many dubbed “Dads” and others problematic. If you look closely, you’ll see a man in mid-life crisis looking, desperately, to woo and buy affection from a much younger girlfriend or boyfriend, who may or may not actively participate in a little gold digging. The more he is taken along for the ride, the more innocent he becomes.
This is an image we have seen in some form from the literature lolita (even if Humbert Humbert was only innocent in his own mind), for films like Something like it hot And best in show, For late contemporary cultural understanding Anna Nicole Smiththe marriage of
Starkey’s Allerton is cut from the same opaque cloth as another young lover this winter film season: Harris Dickinson as Halina Raine’s Samuel. Babygirl. We don’t know much about either (maybe because both Queer And Babygirl is slightly underwritten). Little we know: Instead of haunting mid-century Mexico City, Samuel works as an intern for Tensil, an Amazon-like tech conglomerate, in modern-day New York City. At the top of Tensil’s corporate ladder is Nicole Kidman’s Romy, its quivering CEO.
It’s impossible to tell if Romy is attracted to Samuel because she’s genuinely attracted to him or if she’s so sexually disaffected with her playwright husband (Antonio Banderas) that anyone with a little oomph would do. With so much in his life in check, Romi craves chaos. Samuel’s subordinate position maximizes this. She comes to represent both relief and danger—a release from the responsibilities of Romy’s girlfriend’s existence and a threat to his finances, family, and career if he ever tells her and Romy’s company about their affair.
Their first meeting is in a dark, dingy hotel. He asked her to get on her knees. They both laugh, and find the whole introduction a little awkward at first. Perhaps it’s all a bit ridiculous. But something about following orders makes him feel like an animal, and fulfills him physically. He asks her to crawl to him. He asks her to undress, and shows her her body, her vulnerability. He asks her to lap up milk like a kitten from a bowl at his feet.
Romi submits every time, finding thrill in passivity.
Samuel has nothing to lose and has everything. When she withdraws his affection, he comes crawling. Romy constantly finds herself at Samuel’s beck and call, whether it’s at her own home, a hip hotel, or a rave, where she shows up in a pucebo blouse. It’s a distinct departure from Kidman’s other 2024 age-gap romance, A family affairWhich falls under the “empowerment” category.
At the end of the film, Romy ditches Samuel and figures out how to have sex with Antonio Banderas. She learns what she sees in Samuel and what she gets from their relationship — moments of self-discovery about her own unspoken desires and repressions. And we’re left with our own little epiphany: perhaps an age-gap romance can never fully recover from a wrinkle in embarrassment.
