June (Ann Dowd) is nearly 60 but hasn’t yet filled out the obligatory paperwork for relocation after 60. So says her house. Not in a weird way. The year is 2040 and her house is wired with a bunch of monitors and an Alexa-like voice tells her when her bills are due or the pH in her urine is less than desirable. June rips out all the monitors and buries them in her garden but you can’t really keep Big Brother out.
June has a good reason for not wanting to leave her home. Well, depends who you ask. A good reason to June sounds perfectly crazy to everyone else. You see, back in 2016 she and her boyfriend were having a fight. She’d just found out that David Bowie was dead and Edward, as usual, wanted to crack jokes. His inability to take anything seriously was a pretty big sore point in their relationship and they were on the verge of a blow-out fight about it when Edward disappeared. Like, a rip in the universe opened up and he went through it and was gone. Gone forever. Gone for the past 24 years.
But guess what? One night, Edward (Ray Santiago) reappears. He hasn’t aged a day. He doesn’t know that he was missing, presumed dead, mourned. Doesn’t recognize this older woman as his girlfriend June.
Speed of Life, written and directed by Liz Manashil, is interesting on a few levels:
a) The wormhole: where did he go, where has he been?
b) The relationship: is everything still there 24 years later, when June has changed so much and Edward not at all?
c) What happens in a few days when June turns 60 and “The Program” takes over?
The Program is a very interesting aspect; seniors 60 and over are given mandatory government housing where they no longer go outside, or socialize with other age groups. They are medicated, zombie-like. It’s a little funny because the old people in 2040 are Millennials. Old Millennials. It’ll happen to all of us. And I realize that Baby Boomers are sort of ruining everything just by reaching retirement age in such voluminous numbers. It’s crushing to the generations underneath them. So I get why you would want to deal with the problem. And yet Baby Boomers are also proving that 60 is hardly old at all. It used to be. Now it’s practically the same as 40. I know lots of Baby Boomers who are fit and busy and contributing in many ways, even outside employment (in fact: perhaps particularly outside employment). They are redefining old age even as they seem to reach it. They are living longer, yes, but also, I think, better. There are many more healthy years after retirement than ever before. So think of June (again: Ann Dowd) as somehow so old that she is now irrelevant to society…it’s jarring. It feels very Atwood. God I love sci-fi/ speculative fiction when it’s written by women.
ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES 
Wow.
Enters Tubularsock as June’s buffed ninety year old boyfriend who proceeds to kick the shit out of Edward and wraps him in a dynamite lined vest and thrusts him back through the wormhole to meet his fate.
Then June and Tubularsock make passionate love followed by dressing in Ninja style clothing while loading their machine guns and plastic explosives to carry out an attack on the Big Brother power structure!
Sure.
There is no point except it sells more popcorn. The bottom line for American entertainment!
Cheers, Tube.
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Sounds jarring so I will watch it!
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Yes indeed LT it is jarring as well as jawing when you eat your popcorn. See you there!
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This I want to see mainly as it revolves around Bowie while its title comes from the opening track of his classic 1977 album Low.
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60??? 60 is way too young for something like that. 80, maybe. I guess I just know too many 70-somethings who are doing perfectly well.
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This sounds fantastic. Ann Dowd is such a great actor too.
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Sounds like an interesting film for 50-somethings like me & B.
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Interesting…and me at 61. May have to look it over.
Oh, if you haven’t, please review Alita: Battle Angel (might be Alitta or Alitta)
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Very interested in this one.
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The ending was lazy. Could have added 10 more minutes to understand what the timeline did when the male actor returned. Did you run out of money to finish the movie or something? The rest of the movie had a lot of imagination but it was ruined by the lack education about changes to a timeline at the end. If it was about relationships, you would have shown how the future would have been different with the boyfriend returning and living the rest of his life with the main actress. 10 more min would have shown that. Everything would have been 180 degrees different. The ending is a shame to the rest of the movie. The producer and director are also a disappointment as well by not showing a correct timeline in the future with the male actor never disappearing. Such a waste of time with the ending lacking time/space lineage, fiction or not, your story about relationships does not fit.
Like is said, the ending ruined the whole movie. Was good till the last 5 minutes. Hire a scientist next time to end the movie accurate. Do your research. Can’t believe the financial backer let you end this movie like you ended it. Great story, till the end that is.
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