Age of Consent

Plot

James Mason is Bradley Morahan, an Australian artist far away from home and trying to prod his muse in the bowels of New York City. Disgusted with life in the big city, Bradley decides to return to his roots and heads back home to Australia. Once there, he decides to become a Gauguin primitive and sets up shop on a deserted island on the Great Barrier Reef. To his disappointment, however, he discovers the island is populated by a drunken old harridan (Neva Carr-Glyn) and her attractive granddaughter Cora (Helen Mirren). One look at Cora, and Bradley excitedly begins to mix his pigments, offering Cora a job as his model. Soon enough, Cora goes native and poses for Bradley in the raw. Love is, of course, in the air. But just as things seem to being going fine in every way, Bradley's old friend Nat (Jack MacGowran) appears on the island out of the blue and proceeds to rob Bradley blind. Barely recovered from the theft, Bradley must also deal with an irate grandma, who discovers that Cora has been posing nude for Bradley and has been keeping her earnings hidden from granny. Bradley's island paradise is shattered and he finds he has to deal with an old woman threatening to turn him in to the authorities for having a minor pose naked before him and his easel. The character of Morahan was based on real-life Bohemian artist Norman Lindsay, who later became the subject of John Duigan's Sirens (1994). ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Review

It's far from the glories of his partnership with Emeric Pressburger that produced The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, but Michael Powell's look at an artist recharging his creative batteries has its charms. Based on a novel by Norman Lindsay, the story will be familiar to fans of Sirens, the John Duigan film about Lindsay and his bevy of nude models posting in Australia's lush Blue Mountains. The scenery here is just as eye-catching, with Bradley Morahan (Powell's co-producer James Mason) decamping from New York to an island along Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Bradley allows nature to prick his muse, but its appearance of a young woman, Cora (the teenaged Helen Mirren, identified in the closing credits as a "member of the Royal Shakespeare Company") who really lights his fire. A comic subplot with Brad's drunken sot of a pal (Jack MacGowran) pursuing a local woman of some means, is pretty silly stuff, and the ending, with Cora's mean old granny conveniently out of the way and the young woman literally throwing herself at Brad, seems forced. But Powell elevates Lindsay's piffle into something intelligent and moving and, finally, rather autobiographical. The director had been wandering in the wilderness for a number of years following the failure of his scandalous Peeping Tom, and this film was his way of keeping his hand in. Sadly, whatever artistic success the fictional artist Brad gained managed to elude Powell. ~ Tom Wiener, Rovi

Cast

• James Mason - Bradley Morahan
• Helen Mirren - Cora
• Jack MacGowran - Nat Kelly
• Neva Carr-Glyn - Ma Ryan
• Antonia Katsaros - Isabel Marley

Michael Boddy - Hendricks; Harold Hopkins - Ted Farrell; Slim de Grey - Cooley; Max Meldrum - Television Interviewer; Hudson Fausset - New Yorker; Eric Reiman - An Art Lover; Frank Thring - Godfrey; Dora Hing - Receptionist; Clarissa Kaye - Meg; Judy McGrath - Grace; Diane Strachan - Susie; Roberta Grant - Ivy; Geoff Cartwright - Newsboy; Peggy Cass - New Yorker's Wife

Credit

Dennis Gentle - Art Director, Michael Pate - Associate Producer, Anna Senior - Costume Designer, Michael Powell - Director, Anthony Buckley - Editor, Stanley Myers - Composer (Music Score), Peter Sculthorpe - Composer (Music Score), John McLean - Camera Operator, Graham Lind - Camera Operator, Hannes Staudinger - Cinematographer, Ron Taylor - Cinematographer, James Mason - Producer, Michael Powell - Producer, Tim Wellburn - Sound/Sound Designer, Peter Yeldham - Screenwriter, Norman Lindsay - Book Author

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