Love me, love my bruised ego: what the narcissist-artist film tells us about the fear of ageing

Bitter Christmas, Late Fame and The Christophers all depict geniuses aware of their waning acclaim and terrified it will end Entertainment culture is so preoccupied with nowness that last month we were inundated with speculation about how directors under 30 topping the box office would change the industry. The flipside of a youth obsession is the conviction that age will increase irrelevance, and this is something that a new crop of films about ageing artists is zeroing in on. Specifically,…