Elegy (***)

There’s perhaps something unsavory about the May-December romance. While it may occasionally happen otherwise, the typical situation is that the older partner, a man, is in a position whereby he can use his higher status to attract the younger one, a woman with whom he would not likely befriend were it not for sexual attraction. The professor played here by Ben Kinsley is certainly conscious of this implicit trade as he tries to pick up attractive student Consuela (Penélope Cruz) at a post-semester party. (He’s conscious of ethics, too, having waited until then.) It’s when the conquest becomes a relationship that things become less clear. Implicitly, the power has shifted to her, even though she doesn’t use it, as he becomes increasingly worried she will no longer want a boyfriend thirty years her senior. The first half plays out the romance as it develops, along with a jealousy and insecurity the professor struggles with. Adapted from a Philip Roth novel, the story thus far is as one expects. (The screenplay is by Nicholas Meyer, who adapted another Roth novel for The Human Stain.)

Director Isabel Coixet and Penélope Cruz bring out a great deal of Consuela’s personality, but the story is from the professor’s viewpoint. (I was especially impressed with Cruz after watching her the next night playing a very different character in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.) Still, things pick up as the stories of the other characters—the best friend (Dennis Hopper), the cheated-on girlfriend (Patricia Clarkson), the estranged son (Peter Sarsgaard), and Consuela herself—impinge upon the professor. I slightly preferred Steve Martin’s wry, less sentimentalized take on the same kind of relationship in Shopgirl.

IMDB link

viewed 8/18/08 at Ritz Bourse (screening); reviewed 8/22/08