Opinion

From ‘Rivals’ to ‘Babygirl’ to ‘The Idea of You,’ Age-Gap Romances Ruled 2024

Few things douse the flames of a budding romance in cold water as fast as someone saying, “You’re old enough to be her dad.” It can kill the vibe right in its tracks, at least for some people.

For Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell), such a comment is a challenge. The former show-jumping Olympian turned politician, who in and of himself is the show pony of Hulu’s Rivals, thinks age is but a number, a spectrum on which he wants to collect as many notches as possible. But when it comes to Taggie (Bella Maclean), the shy but strong-willed daughter of his newscaster neighbor Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner), he’s suddenly aware of the dynamic their age difference poses. It’s what makes the prospect of her even more intoxicating, and not just for the reasons you probably think.

Rupert and Taggie’s flirtatious tango is just the latest in a string of age-gap romances that are throwing caution and societal norms to the wind in favor of titillating stories that use cross-generational couples to expose the deeper desires and desperations of the human condition. Rivals’ central will-they-won’t-they romance really has the genre to itself on TV right now, with a few noteworthy recent exceptions.

But on the big screen, age-gap couples have never been hotter. Nicole Kidman is garnering rave reviews and Oscar buzz for A24’s Babygirl, in which she plays a high-powered exec who risks everything when she surrenders her power and control to a handsome, dominant intern — corporate hierarchy be damned. The shifting sexual authority between Kidman’s Romy and Samuel (Harris Dickinson) is liberatingly erotic for the wife and mother, who finds power in the danger of letting go. Doing so in the hands of a younger man who is her subordinate only further stimulates the thrill as she relinquishes her age, her experience, and her willpower to this boy who knows how to wield it to her pleasure.

Similarly, Rupert and Taggie’s swelling attraction for each other is so hot because, for him, it is completely different than what is quite literally always on offer to him. Rupert gives up nothing in his dalliances with the adult women that fall over themselves to be with him. He is in a position to give and take however and whatever he pleases. But with Taggie, he is the one with more sexual and life experience. He has more influence than her. He has both more practice and less reason to give a damn about what anyone thinks. In giving himself over to her and their undeniably chemistry, there is a weight of responsibility placed on him to be the grown up for once — and it surprises even him how much that turns him on.

Hulu

But just as much as he is the adult between them, the sudden shift in that dynamic in the Season 1 finale is what makes their long-awaited kiss so passionate. By that point, Rupert has shown restraint and respect (for the most part) for what their age difference mean. But when she finally voices her hunger for him, he’s the one falling over himself to say everything she wants to hear, including a strikingly vulnerable “I can’t breathe without you.” Suddenly, the imbalance of age is gone because they have met each other on their terms.

Quite conversely is the age-gap romance at the center of Queer, the new film from Luca Guadagnino starring Daniel Craig as an drug-addled American expat living in Mexico City who takes a break from haunting clubs and bars to fall madly in love with Allerton (Drew Starkey), a discharged Navy sailor. In this case, Craig’s William hands over every fiber of his being to this gorgeous young man, in whom he sees the shades of youth that he lost long ago. But it isn’t about control. It’s about a yearning need to feel something that we think only those unvarnished by life can still access. As adults, we envy the perception that younger generations have it easier, and as children we long for the freedom of being an adult. While the sex is hot and steamy, it is much harder for William and Allerton to marry their two world views across generations because of where they are coming from.

The list of other such age-gap romances goes on and on just in 2024. Kidman previously starred in Netflix’s rom-com A Family Affair, in which she dates a younger movie star (Zac Efron) for whom her daughter (Joey King) is the overworked and unpaid assistant. Also on Netflix, Laura Dern goes outside her comfort zone at a Moroccan writer’s retreat when she tumbles into a romance with a younger man (Liam Hemsworth) in Lonely Planet.

On the TV side, AMC’s adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire makes the case, albeit more dramatically, that age doesn’t matter, as it sets up the love triangle between Louis (Jacob Anderson) and his two vampire paramours, Lestat (Sam Reid) and Armand (Assad Zaman), both of whom stopped blowing out birthday candles after their first century.

Prime Video

But arguably the healthiest of all recent age-gap relationships can be found in Prime Video’s The Idea of You, in which single mother Solène (Anne Hathaway) finds herself in love with Hayes (Nicholas Galitzine), a twenty-something pop star. For these two, age certainly is a number because everyone is constantly reminding them it is. He performs on the biggest stages in the world, and the adoring public tends to be a nosy and judgmental audience when it comes to things they don’t understand — or are insanely jealous of. Yet, from the moment Solène and Hayes meet, they genuinely seem to fill a void the other has in their life. Through him, she gets to indulge in the privileges of youth that she missed out on as a young mother. In her, he finds an adult who will let him be a grown up in a world that values his youth more than anything else.

Age-gap romances can be hot, heavy, and heartwarming if done right. By the very nature of being products of different generations, two people can provide the other something they’ve lost or never had. They can fill in the blanks the other didn’t even know they were missing the answers to. What Rupert and Taggie can offer each other — and if it’s worth the challenges they will inevitably face from her dad and the rest of the world — is a question that will be explored in Season 2. But if anything can be gleaned from this year of age-be-damned romances, it’s that there is more than just cheap thrills to be found in the generation gap.

How do you feel about age-gap romances? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.