SXSW Film Reviews

Still Doing It

Documentary Feature Competition, World Premiere

Secret trysts in the nursing home, finding a lover who's 40 years younger, witnessing the onward technological march of self-pleasuring devices: This is what the frank (if not obsessively confessional) interviewees in Still Doing It promise women can look forward to after 65. Of course, the minds of these sexto- and septo- and octogenarians are not all-nasty, all-the-time, and the documentary uses sex as a springboard (whee!) for more poignant discussions of ageism, death, and women's eternal struggle with body image (including one woman's glum comment to Fishel that seeing herself in the footage made her realize how old she looked). Venturing into these areas turns Still Doing It into more of a downer than an upper. However, through their willingness to bare all, both figuratively and literally, the women who are still proudly and enthusiastically doing it challenge many an assumption about sex in the sunset years.

(Alamo, March 19, 10pm)