I have managed to tell u guys about this movie so long ago ...hmm should be around Jan this year since i was still being with my ex boyfriend... ok ok lah, pls dun talk about the part ex- ...
Let s talk about the movie. It gonna be one of the movies that makes me think a lot about it even afer the show even untill now...Everytime i think of it...i dunno i feel like it s just apart of my life...It s like my life as in the concerto then elegy will represent for those falling notes where i dun dare to walk out of the shadow just hide my wet eyes... where i was crawling back to memory and regret...
i hope you guys in vietnam can hav a chance to watch this..but PLEASE watch it in English. Dun let our GLAMOUROUS DOMESTIC MOVIE INDUSTRY spoil the my movie, if not u would think the movie just talk shit =.=' ...it s really bad anyway.
Hence talking about this movie rite, i want to introduce u guys this review about movie...Hmmm ok la i know there are some ppl out there keep complaining about my English lah...i should stop here lol and lets the professional talk then, let s welcome Ray from Trevvy, which is the website where the review was posted.
Trevvy's Ray looks at Elegy, the new film starring Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz. Opens 1 Jan exclusively at the Picturehouse. 30/12/2008
“Adapted from the novella The Dying Animal by Philip Roth, the film presents a grave, melancholy meditation on aging, the pathetic older male's possessiveness and the ways a man can and cannot cope with the desperate and wayward flesh.”
Surely we've all been plagued by the thought of growing old. In the best of scenarios, we can only hope we will go into our grey years gracefully. Neatly, even. Sexual desire should diminish - of course, the operative word being should.
But some of us retain a keen appetite even as we age, and it is particularly frustrating when it is an appetite for a young partner. It's double the trouble. It hounds you persistently, never letting you go even if you want it to let you fade and die out.
That is the unkind, unforgiving situation which English-born Oxford-educated Columbia University professor and literary star David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley) finds himself in, as he approaches his 70s in Elegy, Spanish director Isabel Coixet's rigorous character study.
He copes with his loneliness by maintaining a casual relationship with Carolyn (Patricia Clarkson delivering a firecracker performance), someone 'appropriate' for him in terms of age. But she is dropped when he meets the visually stunning Consuela Castillo (Penelope Cruz) in the practical criticism class he teaches as she walks down the steps of the lecture theatre and takes her seat with a Roland Barthes book clutched to her bosom.
There their May-December romance begins. But it is a curiously intellectual one. He is, after all, terribly educated. Even the eyeing and flirtation is calculated. He wins her over by comparing her eyes to a Goya painting. It is thoroughly enticing, watching how Kingsley's Kepesh - at times smooth, sometimes faltering and hesitant, but always engaging - approaches the prey that will change his life as she falls for him too.
Adapted from the novella The Dying Animal by Philip Roth, the film presents a grave, melancholy meditation on aging, the pathetic older male's possessiveness and the ways a man can and cannot cope with the desperate and wayward flesh.
The talk in the film may be overwrought, and director Isabel Coixet's cinema isn't anything groundbreaking. But her careful compositions, where nothing, not even a strand of hair, is out of place and where it shouldn't be, where the light falls exactly where it should in the darkness of Kapesh's room in his moments of frustration and self-alienation, and her letting the film run its character-driven course, is what makes the film more than just bearable.
Kingsley's performance is refined to such a degree that one cannot help but both be angry at his failings yet at the same time sympathize. The crinkle of every line on his face and body is shot through with humanity. Without distancing the audience regardless of how old they are when compared to Kapesh, it awakens in everyone the reminder that one day we might too face the same fears and insecurities as time robs us of our youth and possibilities.
Adapted from http://www.bloggernews.net/118448
Philip Roth is by far one of the finest American writers alive. Yet, we do not get to see many adaptations of his works on screen. The primary reason why his novels and stories are rarely adapted into films is that they are challengingly and effortfully filmable. It’s not easy to film stories about ideas, moods, and complex characters like those in his books. Yet, it’s not impossible to achieve such a task.
Case in point: Isabel Coixet’s Elegy, premiered at the 2008 Berlinale, an adaptation of Roth’s novella The Dying Animal. Roth’s book offers various kinds of potential for greatness here and certainly Coixet does not hold back in reshaping her poignant source material.
Quite a serious drama. As usual with several provocative scenes, and this presented from an older guy's POV. Midlife crisis. Wat'd happen to an older bachelor - who was knowledgable, charming and a professor. Was married but left his wife and son. A man who was afraid of commitment...of letting any woman to get too close. So when he was captivated by the young and beautiful Consuela, his insecurity arising from fear of commitment and his older age cause him to be very jealous and possessive of her. YEt despite his jealousy & possessiveness, he was unwilling to show his commitment towards the woman he loved.
He lost her...and his best friend...and his son whom he seldom tried to relate to. When Consuela came back in his life with a piece of upsetting news, he was damn afraid for her - she was going to have operation.
Sounds full of tears and heartpains rite...LOL my style my style :P
Giving u guys some sources about the movie :
synopsis
Charismatic professor DAVID KEPESH (Ben Kingsley) glories in the pursuit of adventurous female students but never lets any woman get too close. When gorgeous CONSUELA CASTILLO (Pénelope Cruz) enters his classroom, however, his protective veneer dissolves. Her raven-haired beauty both captivates and unsettles him. Even if Kepesh declares her body a perfect work of art, Consuela is more than an object of desire. She has a strong sense of herself and an emotional intensity that challenges his preconceptions. Kepesh’s need for Consuela becomes an obsession, but ultimately his jealous fantasies of betrayal drive her away. Shattered, Kepesh faces up to the ravages of time, immersing himself in work and confronting the loss of old friends. Then, two years later, Consuela comes back into his life—with an urgent, desperate request that will change everything.
director
Isabel Coixet
cast
Penelope Cruz, Ben Kingsley, Dennis Hopper
genre
Drama
runtime
113 mins
rating
M18 (Sexual Scenes) ~~~ really serious but the most touching scenes also.
have fun then!
Junio
Ps: dedicate to my frens here especially Oneleaf who shared with me his great movies :)
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