With Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth’s Lonely Planet, the age-gap romance is officially a trend

Two movies don’t make a trend, but four, yes, four makes it officially a trend.

The trailer for Lonely Planet has been released and while it doesn’t involve a travel guide traversing the globe, pointing to the best laksa joint in Singapore, it does have exploration of another kind.

Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth will headline the romantic drama from filmmaker Susannah Grant, who wrote and directed the film.

The movie is set in a writers’ retreat in Morocco where Dern’s character, Katherine, is trying to finish a book. She’s at an impasse but finds renewed vigour when she meets a young man named Owen (Hemsworth) there with his girlfriend.

The trailer is at pains to stress that Owen and his girlfriend’s (Diana Silvers) relationship is not on the rocks, so we’re not going to judge him too harshly for embarking on what the logline has called an “intoxicating, life-altering love affair”.

The trailer certainly suggests some steamy scenes ahead with the two characters in a hot embrace, as their bodies find each other and Katherine warning Owen, “careful there”.

Keen observers will note that there is a 33-year age gap between Dern, 57, and Hemsworth, 33.

That particular combination – the older woman and the younger man – has been all the rage this year. After a century of Hollywood making movies in which the older man and the younger woman love interests has been the norm, Lonely Planet is the fourth release since May to feature the opposite.

The movie follows on the heels of The Idea of You with Anne Hathaway, 41, and Nicholas Galitzine, 29, A Family Affair with Nicole Kidman, 57, and Zac Efron, 36, and Babygirl with Kidman and Harris Dickinson, 28.

Sure, it seems like a trend that’s revolving around the same players. Kidman and Efron had previously played lovers in the 2012 movie The Paperboy, and Hemsworth has been down this road before too, playing the love interest to Kate Winslet in The Dressmaker.

But it is notable because while the movies, or at least The Idea of You and A Family Affair as Babygirl has so far only played the Venice Film Festival and Lonely Planet is not due for release until October 11, does touch on the age gap between its leads, there’s no hand-wringing moralism.

The women in these films are not depicted as lascivious or defective. They’re just regular people, some with broken hearts and past failed relationships, but that’s everyone.

While it’s not as casual and unremarked upon as, for example, the hundreds of older-men-younger-women onscreen pairings – Emma Stone, 25, and Colin Firth, 53, in Magic in the Moonlight, Jennifer Lawrence, 22, and Bradley Cooper, 37, in Silver Linings Playbook, Margot Robbie, 26, and Jared Leto, 44, in Suicide Squad – it’s a step-up from being labelled a “cougar”, as if the age gap is the only thing that defines the romance.

Dern told Netflix’s Tudum website, “The dynamic between the younger man and the older, established writer intrigued me because it’s not just about romance – it’s about finding someone who truly sees you and understands you, which is something deeply human and relatable.”

Kidman said at the Babygirl press conference at Venice, where she was also awarded best actress for her performance, that the movie was about sex and desire.

She said, “This is one woman’s story, and I hope it’s a liberating one.”