Netflix’s latest release joined the rising trend in age-gap romance films; flipping the traditional narrative on its head to focus on couplings between older women and younger men.

Released last week, Lonely Planet stars Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth, whose characters’ friendship transforms into an ‘‘intoxicating, life-altering love affair’’ during a writer’s retreat in Morocco.

The plot, setting and characters fit snugly into the romance genre.

But the 23-year age gap between Dern, 57, and Hemsworth, 34, is a notable detour from stereotypical couples seen in film.

Lonely Planet comes on the heels of two high-profile Hollywood releases this year featuring couples with similar age gaps: The Idea of You, starring Anne Hathaway, 41, and Nicholas Galitzine, 30, and A Family Affair, starring Nicole Kidman, 57, and Zac Efron, 36.

This trend is set to continue with the December release of Babygirl, an erotic thriller starring Kidman and Harris Dickinson, 28.

Interest building for years

On-screen couples with age gaps are certainly nothing new, including pairings between older women and younger men.

But there has been a notable uptick in films revolving around the latter this year.

The trend did not pop up out of nowhere, Deakin University senior lecturer in writing and literature Jodi McAlister told TND.

Hitting 40 once seemed to spell death for the sexual appeal and dateability of women onscreen, marking an immediate shift in offers for romantic or adventurous roles to witches and grandmothers.

But with pushes for more representation for everything from different races to sexualities over recent years, there has also been  greater interest in the love lives of older women.

McAlister said this shift was most evident in the realm of reality television, with an influx of dating shows focused on older couples ranging from the “heartfelt” The Golden Bachelor/Bachelorette franchise to more “gimmicky” series like MILF Manor and Love for the Ages.

Australian National University Centre for Future Social Policy Research demographer Liz Allen said relationships tend to be more successful when partners have more in common, from age to socioeconomic status, as the risk of conflict is reduced.

Current online dating trends may be breaking down some barriers, but Allen said increasing depictions of older women and younger men resulted from growing acceptance in popular culture that women don’t have a “use-by date”.

The shift has been driven “by women, for women”.

“Women going through, for example, perimenopause and menopause, are the ones that are funding these projects, these films, these TV series, to enable a greater depiction of women across all ranges,” Allen said.

“That change is being led by women in influential positions with the financial power to back women.

“And I think it’s a grave indictment on us that it’s taken that wave of protest … to allow it, and the fact that we see it as a protest.”

Bucking problematic norms

The 10 to 20-plus-year age gaps between older female actors and younger male counterparts in recent releases may seem like a simple reflection of similar age-gap romances commonly portrayed between older male and younger female actors.

There is a key difference: The young male actors paired with older women tend to be in their late twenties and early thirties.

Scarlett Johansson was still underage when filming Lost in Translation. Photo: AAP

Meanwhile, it has been common for young female actors to be in their late teens to early twenties while paired with older men.

Think Jurassic Park (Sam Neill, 43, and Laura Dern, 23), Pretty Woman (Richard Gere, 40, and Julia Roberts, 22), and Lost in Translation (Bill Murray, 52, and Scarlett Johansson, 17).

“I don’t want to make a sweeping generalisation here, but I’m not sure there’s much interest in eroticising ‘the boy’ the way that older men have eroticised ‘the girl’,” McAlister said.

“It’s very clear that these are still men, and they are men that the older woman is not necessarily going to have to mother … he’s an adult. But you also have that frisson of the forbidden that comes with dating a younger man, because that’s not what we expect.”