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Created Jan 10, 2015 02:48PM PST • Edited Mar 21, 2022 06:44AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Ben Kingsley gets in much deeper than planned after seducing a much younger Penélope Cruz in Elegy. Isabel Coixet’s movie comes by its sexual fixations via pedigree: Phillip Roth’s novel The Dying Animal. Think of it as Portnoy’s Complaint, the When I’m 64 rendition – “Will you still need me?” its core concern.

   Kingsley’s egocentric Lit Prof doesn’t deserve Cruz’s pure beauty and knows it. So naturally he’s completely manipulative throughout their relationship. Seduction, passion, jealousy – sexual obsession.

   He’s a sophisticate who teaches subversiveness, yet is strictly old-fashioned in his own sex life.
   IOW, a raging hypocrite.

   Did I mention there’s lots of skin? Kingsley’s toned sixtysomething & Cruz’s voluptuous thirtysomething.

   Bottom Line
   A female director from Spain (Isabel Coixet) helming Spain’s greatest Movie Queen (Penélope Cruz), opposite the great Kingsley, in a Roth story of sexual obsession, give Elegy an across-the-board pedigree.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Penélope Cruz transfixes as Consuela Castillo, an eager college student from a good Cuban-American family. She’s plenty strong enough to regularly tell the truth to her older lover, which are acts of intelligence and courage under the circumstances. Cruz fans – count me in – won’t be disappointed.

   Ben Kingsley essays the ultimate New Yorker as David Kepesh, Philip Roth’s Manhattan Lit. Prof., a character with a surefire method for picking up coeds. Kingsley was in impressive shape in ’08, performing in his 60s while playing a guy in his 50s who seduces a student in her 30s. Like I said, impressive.

   Supporters

   • Dennis Hopper plays Kingsley’s best friend and squash buddy, a Pulitzer-winning poet and man-about-town. Elegy was one of Hopper’s last movies.
   • Patricia Clarkson as Kingsley’s fun-buddy, a former student who comes to the Apple to get shined.
   • Peter Sarsgaard as Kingsley’s angry son, bitter that his Dad wasn’t much of a Dad
   • Deborah Harry as Hopper’s long suffering wife
   • Charlie Rose as Charlie Rose, interviewing the faux literary star

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

7. Female Costars Really Great 4.5

8. Male Costars Really Great 4.5

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Isabel Coixet’s great film is from the great Nicholas Meyer’s screenplay of Philip Roth’s 2001 novel The Dying Animal. IOW, a female director of a film taken from a Roth novel about a sexually obsessed man. He’s a deeply cynical man, one who is manly, but fails every test of being a man.

    His final test hits hard, more importantly on her, challenging him to act beyond himself.

11. Direction Great 4.0

    Isabel Coixet is the Camera Operator as well as the Director. That’s a woman taking a personal interest in the viewpoint of her film.

12. Play Great 4.0

    The great Nicholas Meyer – he of the Great Star Trek II, IV, VI trilogy – wrote the screenplay based on Roth’s 2001 novel The Dying Animal.

    Notables

    • Full of the Lit. Professor’s banal peccadilloes, a boy in the guise of a man, self-absorbed on himself
    • Being honest trumps being morally correct, a surefire way to get people in trouble.
    • Owning art is like controlling beauty.

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Great 4.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.5

    Celebrates Penélope Cruz’s breasts, a fixation that gets a comeuppance.

17. Sex Erotic 2.6

18. Violence Gentle 1.0

19. Rudeness Polite 1.0

21. Reality

    Glib 1.1

    Ben Kingsley’s Manhattan Lit. Prof. uses a Moto Razor in this 2008 movie, smartphones being then introduced but not yet ubiquitous.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.2

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0