From The Idea of You to A Family Affair: the summer of

Anne Hathaway and Nicole Kidman are romancing younger stars in glossy new romcoms, adding texture to the dreaded cliche of the ‘cougar’

A Family Affair, a new romcom from Netflix, knows the precisely calibrated fantasy it’s offering: a romance between a celebrity and a normal person, a titillating but not scandalous age gap, some movie-star chemistry threatened by a mild and ultimately surmountable amount of disapproval. The twist? The woman in this pairing, a 50-year-old writer played by 57-year-old Nicole Kidman, is the elder of the pair. A widow with a few books under her belt and an enviable closet of cast-off designer gowns, Brooke summarily charms (and mounts) actor Chris (34-year-old Zac Efron), who in the film is 16 years her junior – and also her 24-year-old daughter Zara’s (Joey King) exacting, aloof boss.

The film, written by Carrie Solomon and directed by Richard LaGravenese, shares with its Netflix romcom brethren a certain aesthetic, for better and often for worse: the made-for-streaming sheen, just-past-current needle drops, cavernous yet lifeless showroom mansions. Unusually for many a romcom these days, it does contain an actual sex scene, albeit one without nudity. But the hijinks-filled romance between two consenting adults is more interesting than it otherwise would be for depicting a notably older woman in a functional pairing, or even still just showing a woman over 40 with any sexual desire at all.