Film Fresh

Directed by Isabel Coixet

Film Fresh International Film Club Selection No. 25
April 2009

Director Isabel Coixet has long been under-appreciated in the United States, despite her many award-winning films and her work with top-flight actors. Her first English language film, THINGS I NEVER TOLD YOU (1996), featured Lili Taylor, Andrew McCarthy and Debi Mazur; her next film that was distributed in the US, MY LIFE WITHOUT ME (2003), starred Sarah Polley, Mark Ruffalo and Amanda Plummer. THE SECRET LIFE OF WORDS (2005) placed Sarah Polley in the starring role again, accompanied by Tim Robbins. None of these films did very well in the US, despite the acclaim and awards they received around the globe.

But things are changing for this Spanish director. ELEGY, her latest film, has finally garnered her some long-delayed and well-deserved attention, at least among the art house set. Coixet’s players are impeccably cast, as always, with Ben Kingsley as the aging, cynical, creatively-blocked writer and college professor, and Penélope Cruz as the younger, adoring, but savvy (former) student who finally gets the better of him. Excellent supporting performances by Dennis Hopper, Patricia Clarkson, Peter Sarsgaard and Deborah Harry (!) add much weight to the film, but it is the nuanced relationship between teacher and student that takes center stage.

ELEGY is based upon Philip Roth’s novel THE DYING ANIMAL, one of the writer’s now-standard tales that pit age against beauty. The details of the story fit many of Coixet’s own obsessions – love, illness, desperation and devotion – and so she makes it her own. Events shift the initial petty student-teacher dynamic, the grasp of the film expanding to take in the largest life and death issues with a seriousness and sincerity seldom seen in cinema today. To say more would spoil the story, so we’ll leave it at that.

Won: Outstanding Performance (Cruz), 2009 Santa Barbara International Film Festival;

Won: Best Supporting Actress (Cruz), 2008 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards

Nominated: Golden Bear, 2008 Berlin International Film Festival;

“[Kingsley’s and Cruz’s] best performances of their recent careers.” – Andrew O’Hehir, SALON.COM