Sexugénaires documentary breaks silence on aging bodies, desire, and intimate life after 65

A new eight-part documentary series premiering Friday on TV5 sets out to do something Quebec television almost never does: take aging sexuality seriously, candidly, and without embarrassment.

Sexugénaires follows eight people aged 65 to 87—men, women, transgender individuals, single, coupled, and widowed—as they talk frankly about sex, pleasure, desire, infidelity, grief, and late-life romance. The series was filmed over roughly a year in intimate settings: bedrooms, bathrooms, family homes, even living rooms shared with grandchildren.

"Ben oui, j'ai des orgasmes, c'est sûr! On fait l'amour pour ça!" one participant says early on. "Je refuse de renoncer à ma sexualité!" says another. The opening minutes establish that this is not a documentary about decline or nostalgia. It is about people who are actively sexual, who take their pleasure seriously, and who are thrilled to talk about it on camera.

Director and writer Vanessa Gauvin-Brodeur, a millennial who previously made the short film Asbestos (selected for Hot Docs), initiated the project because she realized she knew almost nothing about older adults' sexuality. "I'm a person who loves talking about everything, and I know absolutely nothing about the sexuality of older people. I've never even seen a naked older person's body," she told La Presse. "I wanted to go where people are afraid to go."

She recruited eight participants with varied profiles and filmed them across the year. One familiar face is Michelle Labrèche-Larouche, the mother of comedian Marc Labrèche, who is known for her openness about her own sexuality. She will read excerpts from her autobiographical novel 40 hommes de ma vie—40 Men in My Life—which is entirely on theme.

The documentary's scope extends far beyond sex itself. In the first two episodes, conversations touch on infidelity, bereavement, and various traumas. The series also covers late-life dating, including how some participants have turned to dating apps. There are moments of levity alongside the difficult subjects.

What distinguishes Sexugénaires from a simple series of interviews is its narrative arc. As Gauvin-Brodeur built relationships with participants over the filming year, she became, as she put it, "their confidante." She began proposing small experiments—a visit to a sex shop, signing up for a dating app—that ask the participants to step slightly outside their comfort zones. "I asked myself: if I were their granddaughter, what would I push them to do?" Gauvin-Brodeur said. "And they were super game."

The result is a documentary that moves and develops across eight episodes rather than reading as a string of monologues. It occasionally resembles reality television, but one with genuine emotional stakes and intellectual substance.

"The goal is to open a conversation about something that will touch all of us, something that is a matter of health, society, and well-being," Gauvin-Brodeur said. The broader cultural silence around aging and sexuality is not accidental—it reflects discomfort, invisibility, and a tendency to strip older people of complexity and desire. A documentary that refuses to look away from that complexity, that centres pleasure and voice and agency in aging bodies, is genuinely countercultural.