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Friday 9 January 2009

Worshipping perfection

Elegy
15, London and Key Cities

This is a film about diminishing male potency, ageing and mortality — business as usual for Roth, then — and what it would take for a man like Kepesh to open up to the possibilities of love. Can he love? He has failed to love his son who is now middle-aged and hates him. And he has failed to love his long-time occasional girlfriend as played by Patricia Clarkson, who now appears to specialise in sidelined, highly strung older women. Can he? Will he? Are we bothered?

Not particularly, no. I don’t think it’s to do with the acting, as both Kingsley and Cruz are rather fine. Kingsley has a big nose, a big bald head and a big grizzled chest which looks as if it’s been dipped in wire wool but he doesn’t ‘big’ his performance. His performance isn’t small exactly, but it is almost uncannily still and sparse. A shrewd way to play it, otherwise David would be a monster. As for Cruz, her dazzling, Audrey Hepburn via Sophie Loren beauty is enough to make you believe she could spin a man off his axis. The trouble is, neither character is that interesting. They may even be quite dull, particularly Consuela, who has very little to say about anything; doesn’t, ironically, seem to possess much of an ‘inside’ to get to. Still, there is lots of undressing, and Cruz does have the most wonderful breasts. I think I do fancy her.

All in all, the stillness of the performances combined with Coixet’s direction, which takes it time, and that bloody piano tinkling and tinkling away make it all rather heavy going; makes you feel as if you’ve just swum uphill through treacle. It may be too literary, too. Naturally, one likes a literary film — one prefers Mamma Mia, but even so — but this is too bookish in places. When Kepesh first chats up Consuela he tells her he is much taken with her ‘elegant austerity’, which just doesn’t seem like something anyone would say. At another point, Hopper as poet says to Kepesh, ‘You need to bifurcate your requirements.’ Well, don’t we all; don’t we all. But easier said than done.

This is one of the films you should probably see when it is raining heavily outside. Such weather would just suit it somehow. Candy colours and a Seventies soundtrack probably wouldn’t, but you know what? They could have tried. And it might have perked it up a bit.

More articles from: Deborah Ross | this section

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