45 Years (2015) * *

Directed by:  Andrew Haigh

Starring:   Charlotte Rampling, Tom Courtenay

What we have with 45 Years is two terrific performances in search of a compelling dramatic thread.    Rampling and Courtenay, two wonderful British veterans, play Kate and Geoff, a couple married 45 years who receive troubling news which threatens to tear the foundation of their marriage to shreds.    Sounds really juicy, right?    It isn't.    As the film slowly progresses with the speed of molasses in January, I simply was not convinced a couple could be so easily fragmented over the news.    Perhaps their union isn't as strong as they thought, and this development simply speeds up the inevitable decline of the marriage.     But this development?    Really?

The childless couple lives a content, well-off life in the London suburbs.    They are planning a 45th anniversary party since Geoff's health issues forced a cancellation of the 40th.    Kate and Geoff are still comfortably in love until a letter from Switzerland arrives in the mail which changes everything.     Years before Kate and Geoff even met, Geoff was hiking in Switzerland with his girlfriend Katya, who perished after falling through a fissure in a glacier.    Her body was found 50 years later preserved in the ice with her youthful beauty still intact.     Since Geoff was listed as a next of kin, he received the letter and now arranges travel to Switzerland to identify the body.  

Kate had vague knowledge of Katya, but now, after persuading her husband to openly discuss his past, learns more about Katya then she would have liked to know.     She can't say she didn't ask for it.     Did the unearthing of Katya's body also unearth Geoff's long buried feelings about his dead love?     He becomes moody, begins smoking, and behaves very un-Geoff like in the days leading up to the party, which was supposed to celebrate a marriage but now has a pall hanging over it.  

I don't know.    I feel Kate unreasonably expects that her husband would feel nothing after the body of his long-deceased girlfriend who died so horrifically is found.     He needs time to process and to heal.     Kate is besieged with doubt about how much Geoff ever loved her, even though he always seemed to be a more-than-loving husband.     Because the movie tries so hard to shoehorn Geoff as the party in the wrong for, gasp, being upset at his unexpected bump in the road, I found myself pushing back.     Just because the movie tells me to see Kate as the wronged party doesn't mean she actually is.    I feel she is being a little shortsighted and selfish, possibly because Katya's memory might throw a monkey wrench into her ability to enjoy her party.    If I were Geoff, I would be mortified by Kate's behavior.  

Rampling was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her work and she surely puts herself through the emotional wringer while trying to appear supportive at first, but soon almost obsessive in her jealousy of a long-dead woman.     Geoff had a life prior to Kate that is suddenly no longer buried in the past.    Kate becomes icy (no pun intended) towards Geoff when she really has no sane reason to be.    Courtenay comes off as the more sympathetic of the two, even if he makes covert arrangements to fly to Switzerland and see Katya one last time.     I don't blame him, considering the way Kate is acting.    Maybe if the movie showed how Kate and Geoff manage to work past this and support and understand each other's emotions, 45 Years might have worked better.    Instead, the movie stays on the narrative that their marriage is now irreparably harmed by something out of both persons' control.     I found the whole thing silly.