The Villages in Florida, America’s largest retirement community, is the setting for Lance Oppenheim’s first feature-length documentary. Tucked a safe distance away from the woebegone slums of nearby Orlando, it’s an age-restricted elephant’s graveyard: “God’s waiting room,” where comfortable retirees flock to its antiseptic subdivisions with the same kind of instinctual drive that lured George Romero’s zombies to a shopping mall. The geriatric Disneyland houses 130,000 residents, 20,000 of whom are single and looking to mingle. Two of the film’s four main subjects of focus constitute the latter. Barbara’s husband died shortly after they moved in; she currently has her sights set on a golf cart salesman — the resort’s main mode of transportation — looking to make a sale, not a love connection. David, meanwhile, is not a villager, he’s a barnacle living in a motor home and looking to play Groucho opposite any matronly Margaret Dumont type who’ll give him shelter and an allowance. Rounding out the quartet are Anne and Reggie, happily married for 47 years until the one-two punch of dementia and cocaine abuse began taking its toll on Reggie. His testimony before an uncompromising judge is uncomfortable to say the least. Seldom has circling the volcano of death been more arrestingly lit and photographed. Cinematographer David Bolen’s Sirkian use of color and symmetrical composition are at times as manicured as the grounds they capture, but at 81 minutes, the film never overstays its welcome. (2020) — Scott Marks
This movie is not currently in theaters.