Age, Disability and Agency in the Late-Period Films of Susan Seidelman

Susan Seidelman’s later films focus on characters trying to make their way in a world that does not have a place for them. More than just a cute rom-com, Boynton Beach Club, a film made collaboratively with Seidelman’s mother, is interested in the physical bodies of its elderly actors and watching them overcome an internalized belief that they are no longer allowed sexual agency or bodily pride. This film provides an interesting contrast with The Hot Flashes, which foregrounds these ideas, while focusing on physical mobility and obsolescence. Musical Chairs makes an interesting bridge between these two films, addressing disability instead of age (and bringing transgender issues into the mix), though foregrounding the rights of disabled people to be both sexually desirable and physically competitive while overcoming internal and societal biases. This displacement of non-normate bodies in society follows Seidelman’s earlier interest primarily in younger women while still staying true to her directorial obsessions. Yet post-Sex and the City, Seidelman shifts to socially “invisible” characters who make space for themselves in a world that wants them to stay home, expanding on-screen representations and clearing the way for Hollywood films to come.