I Could Never Be Your Woman has age issues. And by this, I don’t just mean that this romantic comedy, which centres on a 45-year-old woman and a 29-year-old man falling for each other, is prone to fixate on their difference in age as well as detail the difficulties the aging process coughs up (for both pubescent youngsters and older folks alike).

It is also that in this Amy Heckerling (Clueless) scripted and directed film, for all of their still being good-looking enough, both Michelle Pfeiffer (born 1958) and Paul Rudd (born 1969) are noticeably older than the characters they portray. Additionally, I Could Never Be Your Woman was obviously stuck on the shelf for a few years before being released here – as can be seen in a passing, but still glaring, reference to an upcoming 2006 project.

As circumstances have it though, now is arguably a good time to bring out this movie – in which Pfeiffer plays Rosie, a divorced TV producer supposedly past her biological prime, and Rudd an up-and-coming young actor named Adam – here in Hong Kong. For one thing, Saoirse Ronan (Atonement) who threatens to steal the show as Izzie, Rosie’s young daughter, is among this year’s Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominees. For another, a particular scene involving the taking of photographs during lovemaking assumes an extra layer of frisson in light of events involving several of the Fragrant Harbour’s entertainment figures that have recently come to light.

Along with the scene in which Rosie’s ex-husband Nathan (Jon Lovitz) directly compares himself, Rosie and Adam to a trio of real-life Hollywood personalities in a similar set of relations, this inadvertently topical scene generated by far the greatest amount of laughter at the film screening I attended. For although they bill it as a romantic comedy, this offering’s makers may have bitten off more than they can chew by trying to mix knowing commentary about the dating game with romantic, screwball moments designed to make the pursuit of love at any age seem so very much worth it.

I Could Never Be Your Woman really isn’t all that funny for much of the time. Indeed, I actually think it can come across as rather sad, even bitter, in tone. At the very least, it truly doesn’t help that Mother Nature (Tracey Ullman) appears as a charmless killjoy who likes to rant on about how “there is an order to this mating game” in which “young outranks old” and a woman over 40 tends to be looked upon as a “dried-out old bitch”.

Yet, while one has to sympathize with Rosie’s reluctance to be content with easy listening music and orthopaedic shoes, the strength of this single mother’s urge to effectively be the female version of Peter Pan can actually be disturbing to watch.

Consequently, much as the movie’s makers might wish otherwise, “You go girl” is not what I want to say to Rosie, for all her being the supposedly admirable main woman behind a TV series with precisely that title and one of the characters this film’s audience is supposed to want to cheer on.

Yvonne Teh

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