CINEMA: Elegy

Based on Philip Roth’s novel The Dying Animal, Elegy is a moving, beautifully acted and beautifully measured observation of a doomed autumn/spring relationship.

David (Sir Ben Kingsley) is a well-respected English professor who is a serial-seducer of his female students. Consuela (Penelope Cruz) is to be his latest conquest – until something extraordinary happens to David; he falls head over heels in love with her. Unable to cope with his feelings and given to bouts of jealousy, the fiercely intellectual David is for the first time in his life incapable of logical thought. Consuela becomes his grand obsession and because of this their relationship can never be balanced or healthy, as David’s oldest friend George (Dennis Hopper) keeps telling him.

It’s not often you see a film where all the main performances are of such a high quality, with Kingsley excelling as the selfish and calculating David who is ultimately undone by his heart. Meanwhile Cruz is luminous as Consuela, her face as eloquent in repose as it is when she is animated. A cameo by Patricia Clarkson as David’s casual sexual partner adds a certain spark to proceedings while Dennis Hopper is just perfect as George. The film is as much about age and ageing, friends and the nature of friendship, as it is about lust making a fool out of an old man.

While the dynamics of the relationship between David and Consuela form the hub of the film, it is the friendship between old friends David and George which resonates the longest – it is comfortable, natural, and unforced, like a pair of old shoes, worn down at the edges.      Dee Pilgrim