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[SPOILERS AHEAD]

45 Years (2015) begins with a dark screen and the sounds of someone operating a slide projector. Later, we realize that this beginning is a flash-forward in the narrative and an indication of how photographic references will be used to deconstruct the relationship of the central couple in the story.

The first images the audience sees are those of the English country home and property belonging to Kate Mercer (Charlotte Rampling) and her husband, Geoff (Tom Courtenay). The view is one of a synchronized duo, seemingly happy in their domestic life after forty-five years of marriage, who are planning an anniversary party to celebrate the long-lasting union.

A road bump on the way to this happy event appears when Geoff receives a letter informing him that Swiss authorities have finally found the body of a former girlfriend named Katya, who died during a hiking accident in the Alps in 1962. Kate knows of Katya, but she wonders why a letter would be sent to her husband about the discovery, and she is surprised by the intense emotional reaction it provokes in her partner. Geoff now reveals that the couple had pretended to be husband and wife during their mountain exposition (where she died by falling into a crevasse), and he was recorded as her next-of-kin. 45 Years is about Kate’s gradual path to understanding the depth of Geoff’s relationship with this lost woman and how his feelings for her have undermined their marriage all these years.

45 Years (2015)

In an early conversation about the couple’s anniversary party, a disturbing fact reveals itself: they have no photographs of themselves together. Kate suddenly finds it odd that any pictures which would highlight positive memories of their life together are not available (and they have no depictions of offspring because the couple is childless). The lack of photographic recordings conveys to the audience a sense of barrenness in this home, as if something has been missing all along that Kate has only recently noticed. Meanwhile, Kate begins to understand that the image of Geoff’s ex-love has remained in his mind, its vividness heightened by the news that her body has finally been recovered. All this time since the mountain-climbing accident, her 27 year-old body has been frozen in snow on the mountain. In a sense, Katya has been halted in time, preserved in her youth, just as if a picture was taken of her, similar to the memory of this young woman carried in Geoff’s brain. She has not suffered the ravages of time or the scars inflicted by a long-term relationship. The picture of her that Geoff maintains is one of an ideal woman, untouched by the flaws of a real, aging person.

At night, Geoff starts to go up into the attic, a place symbolic of how we store visual memories in the mind. Kate climbs the stairs one day to find out what he is doing there and discovers memorabilia of her husband’s ex-love, including photographs of Katya—a fact that wounds her doubly given that he has saved no photos of Kate. She finds slides, too, and it is here that we catch up to the earlier flash-forward sounds we heard at the beginning of the movie. We see the devastation on Kate’s face as the projector reveals that, before she died, Katya was pregnant. The audience finds out along with Kate that her husband’s loss of a child carried by a woman he loved (and perhaps still does) has subverted and diminished the entire life she’s spent with the man she loved. When she confronts Geoff about her discovery, he admits how much he loved the mother of his unborn child and that he would have married her if he had had the chance.

45 Years (2015)

The movie ends with the much-anticipated wedding anniversary celebration. But while Geoff puts on a good show of emotion to play the part of an ideal, devoted husband, the final moment of the film features the camera moving in to Kate’s face, showing how lost, unsatisfied and betrayed she feels as she performs their first dance for the gathered audience of friends. We know in this closing shot that Kate cannot forget the damage done to their marriage by the secret imprint of Katya, and Kate now believes that these 45 years have been a lie.

Apart from this final shot, the most telling incident that occurs at the anniversary party again calls our attention to the symbolism of photographs. Kate’s and Geoff’s best friends reveal a surprise collection of photographs featuring the couple’s life over the years (including a shot of their missed dog). But while this moment seems like a resolution, and Geoff appears confident that it has satisfied Kate’s dissatisfaction on the subject of photos, Kate is not mollified. The collected photographs from their friends only highlight the fact that they have saved no photographs of their own to cherish. The revelation that the photographs exist only outside of their home, seen in the eyes of their acquaintances, reinforces Kate’s underlying fear that their marriage exists only as an outward appearance, a hollow shell whose inside has been rotten from the start.