Cheers to Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, Netflix and director Ritesh Batra on their upcoming film, Our Souls At Night, being selected for a special Venice Film Festival gala. The septugenarian romance will premiere on Friday, 9.1. Could this mean that Redford and Fonda will hit Telluride a day or two later? Souls is their third romantic pairing after Barefoot in the Park (’67) and Electric Horseman (’79). (Nobody counts The Chase, in which they were merely part of a hothouse ensemble.) The sentimental “together again” factor plus the decision to screen Souls out-of-competition amounts to a coded message for Venice critics to tred gently. The Colorado-set film begins on a note of platonic companionship with Fonda’s Addie Moore initiating a no-nookie relationship with Redford’s Louis Waters. The fact that Souls was briefly shot in Florence suggests that things ripen.

Robert Redford, Jane Fonda in Ritesh Batra’s Our Souls At Night (Netflix, sometime in late November)

(l. to r.) Director Ritesh Batra, Fonda, Redford during filming.