Cougars are all the rage in the media now, and Hollywood is planning a whole slew of films about older women dating younger men. I liked them better when they were called MILFs, but whatever you want to call them everyone has convinced themselves that young men would love nothing better than to be dated by surgically enhanced older ladies with an out of control libido. It’s not true, but I guess the world figures Ashton Kutcher for more of a trendsetter than he actually is. I don’t care how great Punk’d was, frat boys just aren’t turned on by menopause and possible mustache.
Regardless of reality, this is a notion that’s about to be blitzed heavily in your entertainment. It’s a fast growing genre, and we report on at least one movie a week which involves the sexual awakening of a young buck by some wrinkled old crone. On the positive side, it’s giving actresses over forty a chance at decent roles, on the negative… well it’s gross.
It’s even gross when the woman involved is Michelle Pfeiffer, who stopped being sexy some time around 1999, though her body doesn’t seem to have caught on. Michelle may soon star in a new movie called Cheri, which according to Variety is adapted from a French book by a French author. That makes sense, since as Americans we know that the French are all decadent, gross, and horny; and nothing says gross and horny quite like a Cougar. Stephen Frears will direct and Christopher Hampton wrote the script, so if Michelle stars it'll turn into a Dangerous Minds reunion. I know how much everyone has been waiting for that.
Cheri casts Pfeiffer in the well-worn role of a past her prime sexual educator. Set in 1920s Paris, the young son of a wealthy courtesan gets sexed up by one of his mother’s middle aged friends (Pfeiffer). When after six years in her bed he’s forced to give her up to marry someone less saggy, he keeps thinking about her until he finds himself retreating to an all Pfeiffer, all the time fantasy world. This could also be the next Batman movie couldn’t it? Meow?
