Coixet's new movie is an 'Elegy' of sorts

Elegy
Cast: Penelope Cruz, Ben Kingsley, Peter Skaarsgaard, Dennis Hopper, Patricia Clarkson
Director:  Isobel Coixet
Rating: **

A film based on Philip Roth's novella The Dying Animal, Isobel Coixet directs Nicholas Meyer’s screenplay about an affair between an aging professor and his young student. Roth's books are all about sex and death and carry brutally honest and sexist views on both. David Kepesh (Kingsley) is a cultural critic who finds his life thrown into disarray when he falls for Consuelo Castillo (Cruz), a student who awakens a sense of possessiveness in him.

Kepesh, till then is basically a womaniser who is trying to recover his lost youth by sleeping with his young and fascinated students. When he meets and starts maintaining a relationship with Consuelo he finds that his emotions can no longer be swept aside or hidden. He also realizes that there is no future in continuing with the relationship because of the thirty years age difference between them. Kepesh is actually recollecting with regret and confusion about what happened years ago.

Patricia Clarkson plays his steady lover who he cheats on regularly with his students, Peter Sarsgaard, his son who despite being in a bad marriage and in love with another woman, will not leave his wife because he does not want to be like his father. George (Dennis Hopper) is his drink-buddy.

Coixet's narrative is serious, there's a lot of love-making and the compositions and lighting are carefully understated. Despite this, Coixet fails to get in-depth into the characterizations. David Kepesh emerges confused and totally lost rather than sardonic or self-deprecating (as in the book). There is very little depth in the interplay between characters and the dialogues are not as insightful as could have been. The  cinematography by Jean Claude Larrieu is quite enticing and despite the engaging mood, you feel a disconnect from the characters. The narrative is devoid of the cutting and edgy dialogue that Roth is famous for. Coixet looks at the happenings between Kepesh and Consuela in a distant and untouched manner, thus disallowing any form of intimacy between the viewer and the characters.

Even the sexism that was so blatantly a part of Roth's poetry, doesn't come across all that sharply. There is not much pessimism either in the screenplay like was sharply etched in the novella. Everything feels watered down and ineffective. This kind of an interpretation does neither the book nor the film any good. It exists in a vacuum and fails to elucidate the right interest!