“They’ll call it a ‘cougar story’ or a ‘May-December thing,’” Sabine warned over Zoom, her face serious. “But I want to make it about something else. About seeing. About a woman who is finally looked at for who she actually is, not for who she used to be.”

Sabine nodded. “That’s the movie.” On the first day of shooting, Marianne arrived without an entourage. No publicist, no assistant, no glam squad touching up her roots. She sat in the director’s chair marked with her name, looked at the young crew who had probably googled her and seen photos from the 1980s, and smiled.

A few of the crew chuckled nervously. But the cinematographer—a woman of about forty with silver streaks in her braids—caught Marianne’s eye and gave her a slow, deep nod.