Age of Consent is what passed for a romantic comedy back in the late 1960s. It starred James Mason as a middle-aged painter/artist named Bradley Morhan living in New York. He decides to go back home to Australia to get reinspired and ends up staying on one of the sparsely populated islands off the coast of Australia. There he encounters a young girl named Cora (played by Helen Mirren in her first major film role) who basically steals anything she can in order to squirrel away money so she can move to Brisbane (and get away from her drunk grandmother) and become a hairdresser. She ends up modeling and becoming a muse for Morhan, reviving his artistic spirit.
The movie is definitely creepy now, almost 50 years later, given the changing times, but it is not as creepy a movie (up until the end anyway) as the title of the movie makes it seem. Mirren's character actually does just model for Mason's character. I don't think it is ever stated how old the character of Cora is (Mirren was 24 when the movie was released in 1969), but it is stated that she is underage, and posing nude for a guy who was definitely in his 40s. And, at the end of the movie, they definitely suggest that their relationship is going to go beyond the artist and model with a working relationship they had throughout the movie, set to a closing theme song that basically suggests now that she has reached the age of consent he can nail her. So, it is certainly not a movie that could get made with the same plot today.
Overall, the movie is good, but not great. Even though it is billed as a comedy, it is not all that funny by today's standards. The big attraction of the movie is, and always has been, the fact that Mirren was nude (mostly in quick flashes and then a couple of longer boobs and butt shots) in the movie. Of course, as she became a bigger star she has not had to take roles that required nudity, so this is definitely rare for her career. And, she was stunningly gorgeous when she was young (and still looks pretty damn good for her age now), which many people in their 30s and 40s would probably not know about her (the first movie I remember seeing her in was 2010, made in the 1980s when she would have been in her mid to late 30s).
The DVD just has the movie itself, with no extras or bonus features of any kind. It is not quite the Film noir era but feels closer to that than it does to more modern films. It is definitely worth checking out if you like older movies and/or are a fan of James Mason or Helen Mirren.
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