Elegy (2008)

Ben Kingsley plays the part of 60ish (in two different respects) author, social critic, and professor David Kepesh convincingly enough, and Penelope Cruz truly shines as Consuela Castillo, a student from Cuba who becomes his lover immediately after grades have been posted. I started to get bored during the middle portions and almost quit watching. Yet, there is a quietly compelling quality to this film that caused me to stay with it. While there's not much in the way of reversals or dramatic action, ELEGY is about real people confronting common dilemmas regarding beauty, aging, and mortality. The dialogue is elegant and meaningful; nevertheless, it's nothing larger-than-life: Just about anyone will be able to relate to the obsessions, suspicions, and tender moments that haunt this romance. The cover and title make it look awfully sad but, while it's no comedy per se, it's often funny and generally far less melancholy than it could have been. There's also some sex, although ELEGY's nothing that many people would want to sit through just for a cheap thrill.On the down-side, the relationship between Castillo and Kepesh is hard to buy in places, and it all seems to happen just a bit too quickly and easily. The fact that he's much older than her is obviously a critical part of the story, but what she really sees in him is never made entirely clear. Still, the good acting, filming, and everything else will probably make it easy enough for most people to at least partially suspend disbelief.

David Kepesh(Ben Kingsley) is a professor with a really colorful personal life. After leaving his wife and son, he has a string of casual affairs. At a lecture he is giving, he meets Consuela(Penelope Cruz) and is smitten by her beauty. They start dating but Davey also has another girlfriend, a former student he has been seeing for 20 years. Consuela invites him to her graduation party so that he can meet her parents but he is afraid to meet them in addition to his commitment phobia, so he makes up an excuse to miss the party. Dave's best friend dies, his son has a blow out with him over the old mans infidelities and then admits to one of his own; like father, like son. Back to Consuela and more drama which becomes a little far fetched, most especially a ridiculous scene involving Dave and a camera; I'll just leave it there. The cast is superb but the ending silly, so it is a slight recommendation.

Elegy (2008)I happened to have read the novel that led to this movie, by Philip Roth, who I had always admired, at least in theory (not all his works are equal, for sure). But I was really repulsed the single minded old man lust of the original story. And I was equally unconvinced that a young (and necessarily beautiful) woman would need and be satisfied by that lust to some kind of simplistic narcissistic degree. It's rare I hate a novel that might at least be well written, and I found myself hating the movie for the same reasons. So to temper things, I'll say that both Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz are superb in their roles. Kingsley as the lonely professor hitting on a young and vulnerable college student is subtle and convincing. And Cruz as that returning (slightly older) student in her odd obsession with this man, and then with a personal tragedy that falls on her, and between them.But that might be the extent of my entry here. There are issues here that are interesting, the first being a relationship built on physical love (and appreciation, in some non-aesthetic sense but relating strictly to beauty) from the man, and on a more cultural appreciation and almost adoration on her part (he shows her high culture). And those are elements in many relationships. But what about the rest of their lives, the psyches? Is this just a fulfilling of two defined needs, one to the other in vary different but compensating ways?Maybe. But then the movie doesn't make enough of it. Oh, sure, we get Kingsley's worldly confidence and education, and we get an eyeful of Cruz's physical beauty, all of it, and so in literal terms the movie goes where the book does. But it is told with linear simplicity. Interspersed are some really painful old man "guy talk" sections, at regular intervals, and the other guy, improbably played by Dennis Hopper, is really just a kind of non-comic relief from the other simple story.There is true tragedy by the end, and if you know anyone who has had breast cancer, or had to deal with disfigurement, there might be a small sense of recognition, that very palpable feeling that appearances matter. But a more likely feeling will be one of poison and cheapness, that the movie (and Roth) exploit a deeply disturbing psychological and almost spiritual issue, about identity and wholeness, and about survival, with enormous insensitivity and superficial ignorance. I know there will be those who understand the movie's point of view, but I think there are more who will not.Oddly enough, the director is a woman (though Roth, of course, is not, and he wrote his book as an older man after years of teaching literature at a college, and the screenwriter is also a man). A puzzling and unrewarding movie.

Philip Roth's writing, though fluid as always, has gotten repetitious and a little slapdash over the years. And since "Portnoy's Complaint" they've usually seemed vaguely autobiographical. If this story is equally self referential, no man can do anything but envy Roth and his character because, despite all the doubt and anguish, gets to have a decades-long affair with the foxy Patricia Clarkson and a shorter but still intense one with the incomparable Penelope Cruz.Ben Kingsley is the sophisticated professor of sorts who has an affair with Cruz. Cruz professes to love him but demands his trust when she's away from him. Kingsley is being torn apart by his attraction for Cruz, for Clarkson, and by his own guilt over the thirty-plus years of difference in age between him and Cruz. He's also, sensibly, I think, concerned that, whatever claims Cruz makes, she's interested in him because he is an authority figure who plays the piano and explains the paintings of Goya to her. She certainly seems sincere in her love for Kingsley, but can she be a closet groupie? It's handled delicately by the director, Isabel Coixet. There is absolutely nothing about it that's in your face. The points are made quietly and the story moves on. A recurring figure in Kingsley's life is Dennis Hopper as a long-married friend who shows up from time to time to help the aging prof and offer common-sense advice. Dennis Hopper, former infant terrible, owns the part. He's as good as he's ever been in a muted role.It's reminiscent of Paddy Chayevky's "Middle of the Night," except more fragile. It also reminds one of a Woody Allen movie, except without the interpolated one liners.Nice choice of simple piano or cello music as both source and overscore. A love story for adults. Nice job by all concerned.