Age of Consent (Michael Powell, 1969)

Michael Powell's penultimate feature, Age of Consent stars James Mason as an Australian painter who takes refuge from the rat race of the art world on a small island on the Great Barrier Reef. An adolescent local girl becomes his new muse and revitalises his creativity.
The semi-autobiographical source novel was banned for decades in Britain for supposed indecency; Powell might have cast a 22-year-old Helen Mirren in the role of the girl but could not escape censure either, with reference made to her being under-age and shown nude at the same time. Mason, on the other hand, seems to have been cast with deliberate reference to Lolita, as if the director were needling the actor. If one is prepared to give the film the benefit of the doubt as regards its prying eyes, with no physical relationship actually occurring, it is engagingly acted and as sunny in disposition as its paradisiacal setting, with some deft verbal exchanges. At times, Powell does seem somewhat at sea in trying to adapt his style to the late 'sixties free love vogue, and consequently things get a tad too silly, but it does feel like a breath of fresh air from the man who provided a light in the stifling wartime years with his imagination.

6/10