Elegy (2008)

Waste of time

Sadly Over-hyped

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley) is a New York cultural critic. He is a dedicated bachelor with only non-committal carnal relationships. George O'Hearn (Dennis Hopper) is his best friend and Carolyn (Patricia Clarkson) is his sexual hookup. As a criticism professor, he becomes attracted to his student Consuela Castillo (Penélope Cruz). He develops a deeper relationship than he initially expected.These are great actors and I really want to love this. David is a head-scratcher character. I can't really get over his May-December romance and he's the reluctant one. It's not only that I don't empathize with him. I don't like him either. The tension depends on how much one wants them to get together. I simply don't care if he figures it out. If he doesn't, he doesn't deserve her.

At the basic, it's a love story that has all the beautiful moments and the difficult ones as well that every lover has met. Sometimes the down time are ephemeral, other times they are definitive… In that way, the movie is interesting, all the more than Penelope is really illuminating and totally charming with her sweet English accent ! But they wanted to do in the American way so the lover can't be an ordinary man but a famous professor ! Things deteriorate when this couple can't be from the same generation as this professor is an old fetishist pervert ! Worse is coming as he is played by the poor Kingsley who has completely forgotten than « Gandhi » and « Schindler » were great as he underplayed ! Now he wants to be bombastic and fails miserably ! Next we really goes into disgusting things as this professor appreciates talking his sexual performances with a same licentious friend played by the awful Hopper ! To finish this stinker, it illustrates the same trend that we see in french movies : this upper class totally obsessed with sex is just a miserable bunch of hypocrites as they always find a pretext to get women nude : sometimes, it's art, sometimes, it's health : here it's the two combined in a sick way ! When you think that it's all they can deliver with their education, positions and money, it's just appalling !!!!

Poorly cast movie Penelope Cruz comes across as a complete airheadShe is so superficial and unauthentic as can be this is Hollywood at its worstTotally self indulgentCruz has no on screen chemistry what so everThis was movie that had some potential but the direction in consort with the shallowness of Crus acting made it a wasteShe can't play a school girl at all it is laughable and a waste of timeHer character is completely affective dull and blandThere is no way the Kingsley character could find her attractive

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.