Skip to main content

ELEGY. Dir Isabel Coixet. 2008

Image result for movie images elegy


If you can stomach the soft porn indulged in for the first part of this film, it becomes an interesting examination of the Western fixation with the body, youth and sex. Focussing on decaying flesh and men’s attitudes towards ageing, it also gives charming insight into male friendship.

Student Consuela (Penelope Cruz) has her kit off a lot so that her professor Kepesh (Ben Kingsley) can enjoy the pleasures of her fresh flesh, so we have to endure it too. The point laboured here is that she is youthful and beautiful, and her ageing lover feels very insecure about his maturity in comparison.

The age gap doesn’t bother Consuela, however. The problem is all in Kepesh’s psyche. She loves him but he keeps her at an emotional distance whilst being possessive, jealous and neurotic about not being worthy. His certainty that the affair is doomed prevents him enjoying it, and seals their fate.

He does have uncomplicated sex with a woman his own age (Patricia Clarkson) and this seems to be an ideal arrangement for them both. His relationship with his son is fractured and there are one or two understated and impressive scenes between the two. The most affecting relationship is his friendship with George (Dennis Hopper) which is intimate, deep and wry. Look out for a cameo from Debbie Harry.

The film explores intimacy and grief, is generally slow, and disappoints with a cheesy ending about serious illness, which even the young can’t always escape. Brave of Cruz to get her breasts out for the general public to ogle but not necessary to advance the story.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Running ‘till your nipples bleed

An email from a friend of mine arrives; she complains that, at work, she is routinely subjected to gruesome accounts of female colleagues’ intimate medical procedures and gynaecological problems. I am all commiseration because I, too, have had years of listening to workplace chats about periods, childbirth and sex lives. Oh please. Later, I wander off for a walk in the early evening sunshine and it is so silent and so beautiful that I flop down on the grass and lay awhile gazing out over the rolling fields, and the mouth of the river, and fall into a reverie. Two men pass by. A few minutes later sounds of women’s talk float nearer and, by the time the two females of the species draw level with me, I have risen up from my deliciously recumbent position in the meadow, alert and tense, something like a meerkat. “I do feel for her. Going down that IVF route is such an emotional roller coaster. I was never prepared for how terrible it was going to be.” I remain frozen in my meerkat position...
Post a Comment
Read more

GLORIOUS 39. Dir Stephen Poliakoff. 2009

Glorious 39 strips away illusions. Poliakoff presents the apparent idyll of an English aristocratic family headed by genteel patriarch Lord Keyes (Bill Nighy). He presides over a country estate in Norfolk and his elegant townhouse in London – a world of golden light, romantic ruins, servants, house parties and happy children. But this is 1939, a mere 21 years since the Great War, the war to end all wars, in which millions died, Britain was crippled with war debt, and the English country house system which he so values was almost annihilated. There are many references to the ancientness of his family and tradition, but now, few male servants remained alive or unmaimed to work the English landscape or to be in service to the old families. Fearing domestic and political upheaval, appeasers such as Keyes sought to prevent Churchill leading the country and taking Britan to war, and to buy off Hitler to preserve British cultural and national identity. Nighty is excellent, contro...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ian McEwan. Amsterdam. London: QPD, 1998

McEwan’s novel about ambition, personal betrayal and revenge features Clive, a modern composer trying to complete a major orchestral work, his friend Vernon, an editor trying to save his ailing newspaper, and Garmony, an unscrupulous right-wing politician on the rise. In common, all three have, in previous years, been lovers of recently dead Molly. They meet at her funeral and the story follows the next few weeks of the men’s lives. Vernon and Clive act as one another’s conscience, each infuriating the other. Which is more important, honesty, friendship and trust or Vernon’s newspaper and Clive’s symphony? The novel presents the difficulties of balancing personal and public morality, the importance of private shame and public reputation, the conflict between taking a moral decision for the greater good, or putting first ones own desires. Not just a simple exposé of a politician with a vulnerable side, Amsterdam is full of double standards and surprises, and takes a long, cynical look a...
Post a Comment
Read more