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ELEGY
Directed by Isabel Coixet
Produced by Tom Rosenberg, Gary Lucchesi, Andre Lamal
Written by Nicholas Meyer, based on The Dying Animal by Philip Roth
Released by Samuel Goldwyn Films
USA. 106 min. Rated R
With Penélope Cruz, Ben Kingsley, Dennis Hopper, Patricia Clarkson & Peter Sarsgaard

Literature professor David Kepesh is a typical Philip Roth character—horny, neurotic, fetishistic, and estranged from himself, the many women in his life, and his adult son. Because his gaze and worldview are so quintessentially masculine, it’s strange to imagine a film adaptation of any of the Kepesh stories directed by a woman.

Yet unlike other manly fare subjected to a female gaze (Mary Harron’s film adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho springs to mind), Isabel Coixet’s movie doesn’t revolutionize the material, Roth’s most recent Kepesh story (The Dying Animal, 2001). It’s a straightforward adaptation with a cast of always great actors. Although Ben Kingsley’s performance as Kepesh might garner him a nod or two at awards time, Coixet’s interpretation stays within Kepesh’s worldview rather than making the more provocative move of laying it bare.

In Elegy, Kepesh falls in love with his beautiful student Consuela (Penélope Cruz), who is 30-odd years younger than himself. His friend, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet George O’Hearn (Dennis Hopper), warns him: “Beautiful women are invisible…No one can see the actual person…We’re so dazzled by the outside, we never make it to the inside.”

Kepesh, who’s highly familiar with sex but not at all accustomed to love, doesn’t really “see” Consuela until it’s too late. He’s not sure what he wants from her, and he’s scared to even imagine a future with her. Instead, he imperils the 20-year-long, purely sexual affair he’s had with a previous star student (Patricia Clarkson), drifts from his work, and fails to connect with his bitter son (Peter Sarsgaard), who jeopardizes his own happy marriage with an affair, almost in a misdirected attempt to find common ground with his distant father.            

One of the reasons that Coixet’s film doesn’t hit the high and low notes of Roth’s work is the casting of Penélope Cruz. Although her performance is strong and it's rare to find a ravishing, raven-haired beauty with the chops to tackle this layered, paradoxical character, she's too old and too poised for the role. Consuela, though elegant and austere, is meant to have a kind of painfully young bravado mixed with vulnerability and naiveté. In his voice-over, Kepesh says, “She knows she is beautiful, but she’s not sure yet what to do with her beauty.” Thirty-four-year-old Cruz, unlike the twentysomething Consuela, seems in full possession of her beauty and sure of exactly what to do with it. A young Cuban-American from a highly conservative family, Consuela is finding her place in the world, but Cruz is clearly a sophisticated, fully-grown European woman.

Also, there’s an intellectual, as well as emotional, superficiality to Kepesh, Consuela, and their affair. The details of what binds them, and how it becomes something that feels less like lust or obsession and more like love, are left too much to presumption. Yet, Elegy delivers some performances and moments that are well worth seeing for Philip Roth fans. Dennis Hopper is hilariously apt as a pithy, womanizing, famous poet. Peter Sarsgaard fully embodies the angry son and proves his Philip Seymour Hoffman-like virtuosity—if you’ve seen him in Boys Don’t Cry or Shattered Glass, you won’t recognize him here. There’s a Debbie Harry cameo, and actors like Kingsley, Clarkson, and Cruz are compelling in any setting. The film, like Roth’s tale, is a tearjerker, and Kingsley’s skill and charisma may well be enough to carry the movie for some viewers. Others, like me, will wish for a more radical approach to the material. Elizabeth Bachner
August 8, 2008