Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz star in Elegy. Samuel Goldwyn Films.
PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (The Providence Journal), August 29, 2008:
MOVIE REVIEW
“Elegy”
Passion can make the brains of even the smartest people turn to mush.
That’s what we learn in Elegy, a dreary exercise based on Philip Roth’s short novel The Dying Animal, which tells the well-worn story of an old goat of a college professor whose hormones run wild at the sight of a pretty student. Think The Blue Angel, which had Emil Jannings as an aging professor who goes nuts over sultry cabaret star Marlene Dietrich. And that was made in 1930!
Well, Elegy doesn’t have quite the same downward spiral for its professor as in The Blue Angel. Its pretensions are much more cerebral and its characters take a decent stiff-upper-lip stab at setting things right in the end. Consequently, it’s not as much tawdry fun.
Elegy ruminates on advancing old age and the attempts by some men to catch that last flicker of youth by proving that they still have what it takes to turn the head of a pretty younger woman, even though it seems a doomed enterprise.
“Old age sneaks up on you,” says college Prof. David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley) at the start of Elegy. “Why can’t a man act his age?” he adds before steamrolling over that very question by turning into a randy teenager in hot pursuit of the radiant Consuela Castillo (Penelope Cruz), a student in his practical criticism course.
David tries to schmooze her with dreamy lines about her “elegant austerity.” He woos her like some gentlemanly swain by taking her to dinner and to what looks like a truly awful and pretentious play, which she finds deep and moving. All the while, of course, he’s trying to get her into bed.
There’s something creepily icky about all this, something bordering on kiddie porn perhaps as David attempts to impress Consuela with his pompous lectures, the books he has written and his stints on TV and radio as a culture pundit. They keep bringing up the 30-something-year difference between them. And yes, there really is a 31-year difference between 34-year-old Cruz and Kingsley. Yet it seems more like 40 when you factor in that Cruz is playing a college senior, which would be more than a decade younger than her real age, and even though Kingsley, seen in several bare-chested moments, obviously has kept himself in tip-top physical condition.
Estranged from his 35-year-old physician son (Peter Sarsgaard), who has harbored a grudge against his father ever since his parents’ divorce long ago, and involved in afternoon trysts with busy career woman Carolyn (Patricia Clarkson), David’s life is made more complicated by his relationship with Consuela. Assuring himself that Consuela is just a fling, he plunges ahead, pawing her, growing jealous when she’s not with him, stalking her to a nightclub when he imagines she has gone there to meet a younger man.
Like some mooning teenager befuddled at romance, David uses George (Dennis Hopper), his Pulitzer Prize-winning poet friend, who has his own younger woman pursuits, as his sounding board.
“You’ve got to stop worrying about growing old,” George advises, “and start worrying about growing up.” He tells David to dump Consuela before she gets around to dumping him. Sound advice, but it’s not taken by David, who keeps up the affair as long as he can, even while dooming himself with his reluctance to meet Consuela’s relatives and friends.
In his heart he knows there’s something a little off kilter about their relationship, although Consuela is prepared to ride it to the end. “Have you ever imagined a future with me?” she asks plaintively. Of course, he has not. He doesn’t want to get too close because he knows she will leave him one day.
Watching all this, you may feel the urge to smack David up the side of his addled head for his foolishness. And frustration with him only grows as David’s inability to make a commitment deepens. When Carolyn sniffs out competition, his unconvincing attempt to get out of the truth seems pathetic.
Because David is so wrapped up in himself, Spanish director Isabel Coixet can’t get beyond making him seem more than self-indulgent, at least not until a startling turnabout near the end makes him see beyond himself. It’s an epiphany, but it comes too late and seems contrived.
Many of the scenes seem stagy, as though Elegy were taken from a play. The screenplay by Nicholas Meyer keeps rolling across the same territory until you may want to shout, “Yes. We get it!”
**Elegy
Starring: Ben Kingsley, Penelope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard, Patricia Clarkson.
Rated: R, contains sex, nudity, profanity, adult themes.
mjanuson@projo.com
© 2008 The Providence Journal Co.
August 29, 2008
USA: “Elegy” a plodding, dismal retelling of an old, old story
Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz star in Elegy. Samuel Goldwyn Films.
PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (The Providence Journal), August 29, 2008:
MOVIE REVIEW
“Elegy”
Passion can make the brains of even the smartest people turn to mush.
That’s what we learn in Elegy, a dreary exercise based on Philip Roth’s short novel The Dying Animal, which tells the well-worn story of an old goat of a college professor whose hormones run wild at the sight of a pretty student. Think The Blue Angel, which had Emil Jannings as an aging professor who goes nuts over sultry cabaret star Marlene Dietrich. And that was made in 1930!
Well, Elegy doesn’t have quite the same downward spiral for its professor as in The Blue Angel. Its pretensions are much more cerebral and its characters take a decent stiff-upper-lip stab at setting things right in the end. Consequently, it’s not as much tawdry fun.
Elegy ruminates on advancing old age and the attempts by some men to catch that last flicker of youth by proving that they still have what it takes to turn the head of a pretty younger woman, even though it seems a doomed enterprise.
“Old age sneaks up on you,” says college Prof. David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley) at the start of Elegy. “Why can’t a man act his age?” he adds before steamrolling over that very question by turning into a randy teenager in hot pursuit of the radiant Consuela Castillo (Penelope Cruz), a student in his practical criticism course.
David tries to schmooze her with dreamy lines about her “elegant austerity.” He woos her like some gentlemanly swain by taking her to dinner and to what looks like a truly awful and pretentious play, which she finds deep and moving. All the while, of course, he’s trying to get her into bed.
There’s something creepily icky about all this, something bordering on kiddie porn perhaps as David attempts to impress Consuela with his pompous lectures, the books he has written and his stints on TV and radio as a culture pundit. They keep bringing up the 30-something-year difference between them. And yes, there really is a 31-year difference between 34-year-old Cruz and Kingsley. Yet it seems more like 40 when you factor in that Cruz is playing a college senior, which would be more than a decade younger than her real age, and even though Kingsley, seen in several bare-chested moments, obviously has kept himself in tip-top physical condition.
Estranged from his 35-year-old physician son (Peter Sarsgaard), who has harbored a grudge against his father ever since his parents’ divorce long ago, and involved in afternoon trysts with busy career woman Carolyn (Patricia Clarkson), David’s life is made more complicated by his relationship with Consuela. Assuring himself that Consuela is just a fling, he plunges ahead, pawing her, growing jealous when she’s not with him, stalking her to a nightclub when he imagines she has gone there to meet a younger man.
Like some mooning teenager befuddled at romance, David uses George (Dennis Hopper), his Pulitzer Prize-winning poet friend, who has his own younger woman pursuits, as his sounding board.
“You’ve got to stop worrying about growing old,” George advises, “and start worrying about growing up.” He tells David to dump Consuela before she gets around to dumping him. Sound advice, but it’s not taken by David, who keeps up the affair as long as he can, even while dooming himself with his reluctance to meet Consuela’s relatives and friends.
In his heart he knows there’s something a little off kilter about their relationship, although Consuela is prepared to ride it to the end. “Have you ever imagined a future with me?” she asks plaintively. Of course, he has not. He doesn’t want to get too close because he knows she will leave him one day.
Watching all this, you may feel the urge to smack David up the side of his addled head for his foolishness. And frustration with him only grows as David’s inability to make a commitment deepens. When Carolyn sniffs out competition, his unconvincing attempt to get out of the truth seems pathetic.
Because David is so wrapped up in himself, Spanish director Isabel Coixet can’t get beyond making him seem more than self-indulgent, at least not until a startling turnabout near the end makes him see beyond himself. It’s an epiphany, but it comes too late and seems contrived.
Many of the scenes seem stagy, as though Elegy were taken from a play. The screenplay by Nicholas Meyer keeps rolling across the same territory until you may want to shout, “Yes. We get it!”
**Elegy
Starring: Ben Kingsley, Penelope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard, Patricia Clarkson.
Rated: R, contains sex, nudity, profanity, adult themes.
mjanuson@projo.com
© 2008 The Providence Journal Co.
