Flipping the conventions of the May-September romance by having an older woman fall for a younger man, All That Heaven Allows is a film about social non-conformism that prefigures many of the themes of the 1960s despite its strait-laced appearance. Hudson’s character Ron is not only an arborist at ease with nature, but an avid reader of the philosopher Henry David Thoreau who introduces Wyman’s character Cary to a more culturally and emotionally diverse, even Bohemian, circle.
Subsequent readings of the film have emphasised the queer subtext (at one point, Cary asks Ron if he would like her as a man), the saturated colours and symbolism of the visuals, and the subtle irony at work. The over-riding theme is captured in Ron’s quotation of Shakespeare: “To thine own self be true.”
