Mamma Mia Part III: Not Too Old For Sex!

Welcome to my third and final post about Mamma Mia! In Part I, I talked about how the movie deals with slut shaming. This first post also summarizes the plot.

In Part II, I talked about relationships between women. In this post I’m going to discuss the value the movie places on older adults and their romantic and sexual lives.

Mamma Mia includes two generations of friends and lovers. The younger set consists of Sophie, her fiancé Skye, and her friends Lisa and Ali. The older generation (who I’m going to refer to as Generation Awesome) consists of Sophie’s mom (Donna), Donna’s friends Tanya and Rosie, and Donna’s ex-lovers Sam, Harry, and Bill. If Donna had Sophie young, as the movie suggests, then she should be around forty, but all of the members of Generation Awesome are played by actors who are in their fifties.

The characters’ ages are never stated, but they are all clearly contemplating the changes that come with the latter end of mid-life. Sam is an empty nester with three grown children, Donna is about to become an empty nester, and the other older characters all have occasion to reflect on how they’ve changed over time and what they want from the future. Bill and Rosie are both ready to question their life-long policy of being “lone wolves” and Harry clearly misses his younger, “spontaneous” self, but Tanya seems quite happy with her single life.

All of the actors look like people who have been blessed with great genes and wonderful bone structure, but they also look like people who have actually aged. They look natural, despite Rosie’s affectionate teasing about Tanya’s plastic surgeries. They look like beautiful people who are in their fifties, not like the kind of people of whom you might say, “They are in their fifties? No way!” They show their years.

The plot of Mamma Mia ostensibly revolves around Sophie’s wedding and her desire to know who her father is. Amanda Seyfried is wonderful as Sophie. She’s absolutely adorable. But Sophie’s story isn’t that compelling. The story that holds our interest (or mine, at least) is the story of Donna and her friends. Maybe this is because as I’ve gotten older myself I’ve found older people to be more interesting – they have more oomph behind their stories, more experience, more solidity. Maybe it’s just that I’m more curious about my future (I’ll be an empty nester myself in only six or seven years and I can’t imagine it. It will be a whole new life) than I am about my past (oh, those wedding jitters).

Mamma Mia suggests that life is made of fresh starts and new chances, and that there’s no expiration date to these things. Some decisions are irrevocable – none of Generation Awesome will be having biological children together, and they can’t rewrite their past years. But they also aren’t frozen in time. We all live multiple lives, and the conclusion of one life (one’s first love, or one’s first marriage, or raising one’s children) doesn’t mean life stops; it means you get to embark on a whole new life. This is a joyous outlook, and one that is rare to see in Hollywood.

Of course the other thing we rarely see in Hollywood is the phenomenon of older people being sexual beings without embarrassment or recrimination. In Mamma Mia, it’s assumed that older adults are going to want and deserve sexually fulfilling lives. One of Tanya’s first questions to Donna is whether she is “being taken care of…Are you getting any?” and she and Rosie are rather horrified that the answer is clearly “No.” When Tanya rejects the advances of the younger bartender, Pepper, it’s not because she thinks she can’t keep the affections of a younger man. She’s totally secure in her sexuality. If anything, it seems to be that she thinks he can’t handle her. Based on the number, “Does Your Mother Know,” she’s right! Christine Baranski, who plays Tanya, did stage productions for years before she started doing TV and film, and watching her take total control of the set, the camera, and everyone in the vicinity is just a pure joy.

 

 

Meanwhile, age has brought the other characters more clarity about what they want from their romantic lives in the future. Harry comes out as gay after always keeping his sexuality secret. It’s infuriating that he doesn’t get much of an onscreen romance in this movie, but he does get to dance with a super hot guy at the end, so that’s something. Everyone is completely fine with his sexual orientation. Because he gets short shrift in his screen time, it’s not the most progressive portrayal, but it does suggest that age has liberated Harry in a sexually positive way. Meanwhile, Rosie, the “lone wolf” suddenly realizes maybe she does want a boyfriend, and after a very silly version of “Take a Chance on Me,” fellow lone wolf Bill decides to oblige her.

The dominant romance in the film is between Donna and Sam. Age gives Donna and Sam a chance to rekindle their young romance. They are no longer encumbered by children. In fact, Sam uses Donna’s upcoming empty nest status to make his case – “You’re going to need someone to boss around on this island of yours!” They are not encumbered by other relationships (Sam is divorced). They are more mature, too:  as someone who previously dealt with conflict by running away from it, Sam has learned a calmer approach, which by the end of the movie seems to be adopted by Donna as well.

Above all, as Sam says in the lovely song, “When All is Said and Done,” they are “Slightly worn, but dignified, and not too old for sex!”

 

 

The movie version of Mamma Mia uses actors with mixed singing experience. The only one who comes off truly badly is Pierce Brosnan, because all his songs are pitched slightly too high for him and he looks slightly agonized. But even Brosnan brings an abundance of charm and emotion to the songs. Having the songs performed by non-professional singers works for this movie, because Mamma Mia suggests that everyone has deep passions, everyone has dreams, and everyone deserves happiness. The movie claims that you don’t have to follow traditional Hollywood rules to be sexy or to want sex. Your sexual behavior and your romantic longings are not based on your gender, your body type, your appearance, or your age, or your ability to hit a high note on pitch.

Maybe not everyone can have happiness (although in this most sunny of movies, everyone gets it) but everyone has a right to want it and to deserve it. It’s a lovely subversion of the Hollywood worship of youth.