Elegy

    If you thought, by watching "Elegy," it would be easy negotiating its emotional streams flowing deeper and deeper into your psyche: it ain't. Director Isabel Coixet was most successful drawing one inexorably, "kicking and Screaming," deeper into the lives of the two primary characters, who have no reason to be together, except, they are. These two incongruent lovers, David Kepesh played by Ben Kingsley and Consuela Castilo portrayed by Penelope Cruz, come together when confirmed bachelor, literary scholar / professor Ben Kingsley deliberately waits until after he has given his students their grades and then throws them a party so he could cunningly advance on his most beautiful the fruit locked within her sexuality. The problem for the professor this time is the student is a more mature (older student) Penelope Cruz as Consuela.

    Any character that Penelope Cruz plays as a sensitive, alluring young woman is going to work. She is such a sensual and intelligent actress, the audience can well understand why David, fleshed out by a much older Ben Kingsley, would be smitten, and therein is the conflict. David Kepesh is reluctant to commit for a variety of reasons, not least of which: his hedonistic temperament with an accompanying condition of self loathing. Consuela, of Cuban descent, did not see their "30 odd years" as an obstacle, and David used it as an excuse to stay distant.

    David was not prepared to deal with his emotional attachment, when he had developed such a complex persona that should have allowed him to escape returning Consuela's affection. It did not work, even though he went through all the proper instinctive motions. His best friend, George O'Hearn played by the enigmatic Dennis Hopper, once rhetorically asked David, "Do know which women are most invisible to guys like you and me? It's the really beautiful ones. We are so enamored by their beauty, we do not see person inside."

    Elegy is a small independent film and it is good. This very complex tale, a Nicholas Meyer adaptation of a Phillip Roth story, was complemented by an outstanding group of actors with Peter Sarsgaard as David's son and Patricia Clarkston as David's sleep-in buddy are quite good. And Ben Kingsley: what a great, empathic and believable actor. At 112 minutes of runtime, you could find some time well spent while riding on this emotional roller coaster.

    Rated R. Released on DVD March 9, 2009.