The Bubble

Under the beaming Florida sun, so the promise goes, there is a place where you can extend your life by ten years in the most pleasant way. With 54 golf courses, 96 swimming pools, countless leisure facilities and clubs, the Villages are a kind of Disneyland for 150,000 retirees. Happy hour starts at 11 o'clock in the morning. Belly dancing, synchronized swimming or karaoke - the Silver Agers enjoy their retirement. "We know we live in a bubble," says retiree Toni with a smile, "but it's a nice bubble." Situated behind well-guarded entrance gates, the Villages are the world's largest retirement town, where you're never reminded of how old you are. Because where everyone is old, old age doesn't exist. Cemeteries that could disturb this impression do not exist, and when the ambulance arrives, the siren is turned off. The film takes us to a utopian-looking test-tube city where not only everyone is the same age, but also the same mindset: mostly white Trump supporters. The artificial world, in which identical little houses with green front gardens line up, is juxtaposed with the wild and beautiful nature that is being displaced by the ever-growing Villages. It's a film about an increasingly fractured society and the legacy left by baby boomers. "One takes away a piece of real-life satire that is remotely reminiscent of the scurrility of Jacques Tati comedies." (NZZ)