This documentary by Sue Thomson, who made Under Cover and The Coming Back Out Ball Movie, completes a loose trilogy that looks at ageing in Australia.

I must admit I didn’t initially plan to see this because I expected it to be depressing and emotional. Having lost two parents in the past 12 years and with beloved in-laws dealing with the aged care system right now, I thought it might be a hard watch. I’m happy to say that it isn’t at all, and in many ways is a lighthearted and warm look at ageing with style and independence, with some background about the very real problem with aged care in Australia.

You know from the opening scenes, where we see clips of politicians falling over, that humour is going to be used to make everyone feel included in this storytelling. The documentary centres around Thomson‘s mother, Margaret, who is living alone in a flat but is socially isolated and increasingly having falls. It’s a good entry point into understanding what it must be like to be a person who has been fiercely independent her whole life, being faced with having to move into a group home.

I couldn’t help thinking of The Blue Trail and the colony and the reality that no matter how much like a hotel an aged care residence is, you suddenly become part of a group where your ability to do whatever you want, whenever you want to do it, is taken away. Sue is on camera with her mother a lot, and I loved seeing the dynamics of their relationship, often spiky and salty. Margaret is a treasure – probably very hard to live with but fantastic in front of the camera. She is great at the side eye to camera when she doesn’t agree with something Sue has said.

We also see other older women; Beverly who has been supported to move into an apartment that she loves by ‘care navigator’ Hanh, Olivia who is a spritely 94 and has a daughter Jane living in the UK struggling to deal with the bureaucracy of the Australian government, and Luciana who lives happily with her elderly husband, Mario, at home.

It’s a while before we realise there is a bit of a theme, mainly that all of these people are living happily and fiercely in their own homes and are very reluctant to go into aged care. We don’t get much of a look inside of residential aged care other than seeing the context of the Aged Care Act brought in by successive governments and what an impact it has had. The crux of it is that once privatisation of aged care happened, the ability to make profits took precedence over the individualised care of people.

For anyone who has had to navigate My Aged Care or MyGov or Centrelink or the NDIS, you will understand the bewildering bureaucratic nightmare of online systems and how this might be completely opaque for people who are older. Even their children, who are more likely to be digitally literate, struggle to navigate them.

Thomson and co-writer Adam Farrington-Williams bring in young people to narrate certain aspects of the film and it is an interesting technique. As my myth buddy Ariel pointed out, it definitely feels like a film that is aimed at younger people, something that could be included in school curricula to help younger people understand the aged care system so they can build their ability to advocate for better choices.

It works in this respect, but I did wish that the young people had been involved for more than just the occasional narration. Some of the most engaging television over the past few years has been around young people interacting with seniors in residential aged care and this is something that might have added a richness to the inter-generational messaging of the film.

From my own experiences of a parent who wanted to stay in their own home in their 90s, I can see that the film touches on some of the issues I experienced. I can fully understand the reluctance to go into residential aged care but can also see that the decision to stay at home often means that children need to step in to provide the care, and that this will nearly always be women. I know that extended family care is something that is the norm in other countries and also was in Australia a few decades back but it no longer feels like the collective responsibility it once was. There is the saying that women are often raising children, going through menopause, and caring for elderly parents all at once nowadays.

Careless doesn’t really delve too deeply into any of these issues, and I think it is great as a primer for anyone who hasn’t really thought about ageing, or the ageing of their parents. If there is anything to be done by audience members, I think it is to raise conversations about this with families and communities, particularly with the understanding that our ageing population is getting bigger, and the support from government won’t keep up with the need. We are all going to have to face this at some point.