Moving on Movie review 2023

The famous saying “old age ain’t no place for sissies” owned by Bette Davis serves as the crux of Paul Weitz's "Moving On." Starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as Claire and Evelyn, two estranged friends who reunite at the funeral of their mutual friend Joyce after decades of separation. The film is a melodrama with comedic elements, revolving around Claire's desire for vengeance for a sexual assault perpetrated by Joyce's husband Howard (Malcolm McDowell) almost 50 years earlier, which upended her life. She withdrew from Joyce and Evelyn and left her loving husband Ralph (Richard Roundtree), and the trauma petrified her for most of her life. However, this film is not merely about its plot mechanics. It is a clear-eyed examination of the compounding weight of growing older, carrying your life, hopes, memories, and regrets with you wherever you go. The title, "Moving On," not only implies moving beyond your past but also to keep moving forward in life, even if your past stays with you.

Fonda and Tomlin have built a deep friendship for decades, appearing together in projects like "9 to 5" and "Grace and Frankie," and their onscreen chemistry is as bright as ever. They don't, however, just play versions of their own personas. Claire is a woman who never found her own power, always living for others after the assault left her "mute." Fonda portrays her with a somber rigidity, holding her body tight as if thousands of emotions are one moment away from escaping the cage she's built around them. As she reconnects with Evelyn, Ralph, and even Howard, Claire's long-repressed sense of humor, sensuality, and seething anger she kept hidden for so long find their way to the surface.

Tomlin plays retired musician Evelyn with her trademark deadpan sensibility, always seeming to say what she means and what feels at any given moment, unafraid to be unabashedly herself. Yet, Evelyn is a woman with secrets, wounded pride, and a passion for music – and for women – that hasn't had an outlet in far too long. She secretly lives as freely as she can in the independent section of an assisted living facility. Joyce's death and Claire's return to her life bring out in Evelyn a bevy of complex emotions, portrayed with subtle precision by Tomlin, whose eyes belie her stoic face and monotonous voice. While Evelyn helps Claire plot out how to get her revenge, the two discuss the immediate aftermath of the incident. Claire didn't report it to the police because "They wouldn't have believed me." On one hand, the dialogue here is on the nose, yet when looking back 50 years and then forward again, and seeing that not much has changed for women in terms of their bodily autonomy and the prosecution of rapists, perhaps on the nose becomes just the truth.

When Claire finally confronts Howard, she graphically describes the assault, recalling every horrid detail as if it happened yesterday and not almost 50 years ago because, for her, time stopped on that day. Fonda delivers this monologue with as much power and conviction as any in her career, tapping into the weight not just of Claire's trauma but all the compounded traumas that the actress has witnessed as a woman in this country for the last half-century. McDowell plays Howard as the kind of privileged man who has done just enough work on himself to consider himself a "changed man" yet has only really achieved healing for himself and for his own sake, not for those he's harmed. Howard is less a character than an emblem of all the powerful men who get away with it over and over and over again. This could be seen as