FemaleFirst.co.uk: DVD: Elegy [DVD] [2008]

Elegy [DVD] [2008]
enlarge	Director: Isabel Coixet Actors: Penelope Cruz, Ben Kingsley, Peter Sarsgaard, Patricia Clarkson, Dennis Hopper Studio: Entertainment in Video Category: DVD List Price: ~~£19.99~~ Buy New: £4.17 as of 21/11/2009 11:57 GMT details You Save: £15.82 (79%) New (13) Used (1) from £2.98 Seller: ehead-uk Rating: 6 reviews Sales Rank: 6594 Format: PAL Language: English (Subtitled) Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over Region: 2 Number Of Discs: 1 Running Time: 112 Minutes Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2 Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6 EAN: 5017239195860 ASIN: B001FB0W4M Theatrical Release Date: 2008 Release Date: March 16, 2009 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days


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Customer Reviews: Showing reviews 1-5 of 6 1 2 Next » There, but for the grace of God..... February 19, 2009 Michael Wolff (London UK) 4 out of 6 found this review helpful What is age? Does it come into the picture br /at all, when a man and a woman love one another. br /It comes into this movie in a wonderful and br /an illuminating way. br / br /Both Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz give performances br /which make you wonder if they've each lived through br /the experiences they're both enacting in this great movie. br / br /Love is hard to capture without excessive sentiment, br /especially in a populist US movie. Elegy has succeded br /in doing this. It reveals the intimacy, the desires, br /the sexual delight and the anguish and pain of love br /brilliantly and vividly. br / br / Interesting insight into love without age discrimination May 13, 2009 HistoryTechDoc (Transatlantic Citizen) 0 out of 1 found this review helpful Elegy focuses on a rather novel love theme that deserves further attention in this age of young men not willing to take on the responsibilites of a permanent relationship. While the ostensible theme may appear to be the considerable age difference between the young university student, played well by Penelope Cruz and the 60ish professor, played as usual in a top manner by Ben Kingsley, the hidden theme really is not their contrast in human years, but rather why Cruz is attracted to Kingsley in the first place. In an era dominated by short-term divorces, Cruz may have perceived more years of happiness with Kingsley, than her previous shortlived relationships had offered. br / br /I do not think that simply writing this off as a younger woman seeking the father figure that she never may have had, and a professor looking for an ersatz daughter he subconsciously desired as a lover, is sufficient explanation. br / br /Elegy speaks to the lack of responsibility that many younger men are no longer willing to shoulder. This generation has in many cases personally witnessed angry divorces in which their fathers are stripped of an inordinate portion of the financial assets that they have worked hard to achieve. In an age of easy, responsibility-less sex, marriage-a-phobia is rampant, finding a permanent partner offering only an unhappy future. br / br /Elegy tells us little of Cruz's previous relationships; all we know is that Kingsley offers what she wants in a man, regardless of age. Ironically, Ben cannot come to accept that she really wants a permanent relationship with him. He ends the relationship by not being willing to meet her parents in person. br / br /In the end they come together again, but now it is too late. The vicissitudes of life point out how personal tragedy is always a possibility that reminds us once again: "Caveat emptor". Seize love and happiness when one has the chance, there may not always be a second one. Beautiful July 20, 2009 Lapidus (UK) More than anything this is a beautiful film, with incredible visuals and cinematography by Jean-Claude Larrieu, and intelligent and beautifully directed scenes by Isabel Coixet. Having previously read the novel that inspired the film, "The Dying Animal" by Philip Roth, I found this to be a faithful adaptation, with only slight changes. In the film, David Kepesh is English rather than American, and his son is a doctor rather than in the fine arts business. But these are merely slight changes and the core of the story remains; Kepesh is beautifully portrayed by Ben Kingsley. He is, more than anything, a pathetic, shallow old man, slave to his desires and clinging to his long-lost youth. He knows his condition is absurd and makes no bones about it, although his shameless pursual of young women quickly made me lose sympathy with him. One particularly touching, recurring scene occurs in a cafe, where Kepesh and his friend George drink tea. George (an amazing performace by Dennis Hopper) tells him his theory about beautiful women; that they are invisible, and that no one can see them, because no one ever gets past the shell of the outer beauty. Close to the end of the film, he inquires of Kepesh: "Did you ever really see her? I mean all of her." To which Kepesh replies: "I didn't understand what I saw...she was this weird clutch of inconsistencies." And George replies, "You're talking about her in the past sense". This alludes to the ending of the film, in which Kepesh is faced with the choice of carrying on loving a woman he is no longer in a position to appreciate at face value. Will he leave because she is no longer beautiful, and remain the shallow, exploitative man he always was, or will he stay? A film you will never forget September 25, 2009 Thiscan'tbetrue (Germany/UK) This adaptation of Philip Roth's congenial novel "The Dying Animal" is a film that shows us the very essence of real, painful, desirous love overwhelming a literature professor in the USA after years of carefree affairs with his female students. br /Not only are the actors Ben Kingsley, Penelope Cruz and Patricia Clarkson playing their roles in an authentic, deeply touching way, but also does the soundtrack with its melancholy piano tunes fit perfectly to the intense, sensual and sometimes almost unbearable beautiful images of this film by Isabel Coixet. br /Even if the plot (old professor sleeps with much younger student)seems quite clichéd, the film is it by no means, but rather introduces its viewers to the psyche of an intellectual playboy, tormented by jealousy and fear of aging, in a clear and still subtle language. I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now March 14, 2009 Gerry O'neill (Morrisville, NC United States) 6 out of 7 found this review helpful This is a beautiful movie, well cast well made and a story well told. br / br /I am sure that there will be criticism from viewers who do not have the patience to follow the story through but then that is part of the charm of the film. br / br /The film begins with the narration of a semi-celebrity professor crowing over his ability to seduce students after their graduation from his course as a confession of the abuse of his position to fuel a lifestyle of selfish self-promotion. br / br /When he meets a student who does not fall immediately for his charms he becomes enveloped in a relationship which awakens feelings that he had previously not encountered. we learn about him from the conversations he has with his best friend and the confidences they hold about each other and from the interactions with two other significant characters, his estranged son from a failed marriage and a woman with whom he has a casual yet regular sexual relatonship. br / br /Our knowledge about the student is released slowly rather like peeling the layers of an onion and we follow the relationship which becomes soured by his obsessive jealousy and selfishness. Eventually that selfishness overcomes his feelings of love for the woman and she disappears from his life although the aftermath of their breakup dogs him as he struggles to come to terms with that and the implications of it. br / br /In a conclusion which is not as the plot has carefully laid out, the couple are reunited through a tragic event which allows their feelings to be exposed. br / br /This is a tender, slow drama which goes to a great extent to establish the network of relationships between a few people in order to bring forth an analysis of how modern life in a post-industrial society has resulted in fragmentary relations involving sex without love or care and where real relationships are the exception rather than the rule. br / br /Each of the actors involved have gone to considerable trouble to avoid extreme positions to create very real and reasonable people who have considerable credibility. Not for everyone perhaps but a very rich film to watch and ponder upon. br / Showing reviews 1-5 of 6 1 2 Next »

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