‘Elegy’: Lust, Love, and Everything in Between

Isabel Coixet’s “Elegy” posits what happens when a proud and self-defined womanizer finds himself falling in love for the first time. Nicholas Meyer’s adaptation of Philip Roth’s novel “The Dying Animal” tries to break into the glass house that its protagonist has built, but the film’s own abject superficiality obscures its message.Columbia professor David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley) soliloquizes about fulfilling desire and the intractability of marriage. But when Cuban-American Consuela Castillo (Penelope Cruz) walks into his lecture room, his self-justifying intellectualism begins to fall apart. A throwback to a more formal time, Consuela’s tailored skirts and stellar posture captivate her professor. But when he snares her with his patented approach to seducing his students, he is unprepared for the hold that she eventually takes on him.David’s unwavering devotion to sexual freedom, which guided him through his youth and middle age, fails him here on the cusp of old age. After a marriage that collapsed quickly, the professor dedicated himself to personal satisfaction, maintaining his autonomy in all affairs of the heart. Through trysts with students, friends, and acquaintances, he took a pointed stand against monogamy and all of the trappings that came with it. But he is suddenly overcome by Consuela’s beauty, and soon finds himself unable to function without her. His devotion to the sexual revolution and his own liberation tugs at him to assert his independence, but by clinging to his old habits and pushing her away, he only makes himself want her more.Ms. Coixet (“The Secret Life of Words,” the “Bastille” segment of “Paris, je t’aime”) makes a compelling attempt at depicting this complicated relationship. From David’s assignations with his longtime lover, Carolyn (Patricia Clarkson), to the burgeoning power struggle between David and Consuela, Ms. Coixet captures a potent captures a potent chemistry in all of her characters. But her greatest success is in illuminating Ms. Cruz’s natural sensuality.Ms. Cruz has long enticed American audiences through her entrancing work in Spanish films. But directors in Hollywood have been unable to harness her magnetism in English. There is something about her lush hair, in the loose Spanish style, and her way of pulsing through sentences that simply gets lost in translation in the overly stylized Tinseltown. She seems to have the kind of beauty that moves, and Ms. Coixet lets her do just that. It is a wonder to watch Ms. Cruz seduce the screen, and a small gift to see her do it in English, embodying the role of a woman who witlessly mesmerizes her lover.The screenplay makes a point of addressing the distinction between genuine attraction and a fascination with beauty. “Beautiful women are invisible,” David’s friend George O’Hearn (Dennis Hopper) tells him. “No one can see the actual person. We’re so dazzled by the outside, we never make it to the inside.”“Elegy” tries to make it to the inside of this beautiful woman, but it is simply too obsessed with her outside. Though Consuela is at times funny, sweet, and perceptive, the film refrains from letting us know who she really is. When she appears at the end of the film with a portent of disease that will ravage her beautiful façade, it is the sort of weepy confession that implies emotional growth but stops short of putting in the work to get there. The plot speaks of David relinquishing his attachment to physical beauty, but the film is unwilling to make that concession.“Elegy” stumbles in its attempt to delve into the nuance of this situation. This is especially true in the handling of David’s relationship with his adult son, Kenny (Peter Sarsgaard). Still holding a grudge against his father for abandoning his family, Kenny finds himself in a similar situation when he cheats on his wife at the age of 42. But rather than find some compassion for the two men to share, Kenny is painted as harsh and overbearing, a badgering hypocrite for trying to find the moral high ground in his own conflicted life.The alternative is David’s lackluster libertinism, which holds little appeal. Even when he reaches out for something beyond himself, Mr. Kingsley’s character remains self-obsessed. David’s fear of aging and the pending loss of his sexual appeal motivate his lust for Consuela more than any notion of altruistic love or compassion.Though “Elegy” has some powerful scenes, the complex emotions at play often slip through its grasp, leaving the impression of an immature man unable to get past his superficial desires. Rather than finding a warm center through the character of Consuela, “Elegy” only finds an empty void.mkeane@nysun.com

‘Elegy’: Lust, Love, and Everything in Between

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