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Elegy
The Samuel Goldwyn Company


7.3

based on 32 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 29 votes
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Rate this movie

Internet Movie Database

MPAA RATING: R for sexuality, nudity and language

Starring Patricia Clarkson, Penélope Cruz, Deborah Harry, Dennis Hopper, Ben Kingsley, and Peter Sarsgaard

Elegy charts the passionate relationship between a celebrated college professor and a young woman whose beauty both ravishes and destabilizes the professor. As their intimate connection transforms them--more than either could imagine--a charged sexual contest evolves into an indelible love story. With humanistic warmth, wry wit, and erotic intensity, Elegy explores the power of beauty to blind, reveal, and transform. (Samuel Goldwyn Films)

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Philip Roth (novel) Nicholas Meyer
DIRECTED BY:	Isabel Coixet
RELEASE DATE:	Theatrical: August 8, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	113 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

A richly textured and compelling film.

100

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

There's a poetic irony to the idea that it took a female filmmaker to finally do justice to Philip Roth on screen.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Smart and self-deprecating story about love and mortality: It’s merely a winter's tale told with a summer's palette.

USA Today Claudia Puig

True to its title, Elegy is a spare, meditative and melancholy film. It is a deeply affecting and profoundly observed saga about love, art, beauty and, especially, mortality.

TV Guide Ken Fox

This melancholy mediation on aging and desire hangs on an exquisite performance from Penelope Cruz.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

This is an offering for mature viewers thrown out amidst a sea of summer flotsam. The title, Elegy, is perfect for the material. There is much tragedy and truth in what the makers of this movie have brought to the screen.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

While this may seem like an apologia for randy older men, it doesn't come off that way, and Cruz gives her best performance to date.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

The film is exquisite on every level, full of sadness and emotional surprise.

Time Richard Schickel

This is a good, serious and absorbing movie -- especially, perhaps, for a reviewer who is roughly Kepesh's age and, of course, eagerly evading the issues his story forces up.

The New Yorker David Denby

The Spanish director Isabel Coixet works with candor, directness, and simplicity. She isn't afraid of lengthy scenes of the two actors just talking to each other, mixed with lavish but respectful attention to Cruz's body, especially her bare chest, which is treated as one of the wonders of all creation.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

As an acting showcase that builds to some unexpectedly moving moments, Elegy has much to recommend it. Had Coixet found better ways to connect those moments, she might have REALLY had something to rival what Roth does on the page.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

An absorbing but somber drama.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

As formidable as Kingsley is, Elegy wouldn't work if his object of obsession wasn't worthy of him.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The result, Elegy, isn't a great film but it is a good one, and better for Coixet's perspective, her ability to interpret Roth's world from the other side of the gender fence.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

By the time it's over, Penelope Cruz has slipped away with it, and transformed Kingsley's character in the process. It's nicely done.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

If Coixet's film is substantially more restrained than its explicit source material (Nicholas Meyer, himself a fine novelist and director of the second and best Star Trek film, adapted), it is no less provocative as a poetic meditation on love, sex and death.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Kingsley dims divine Elegy.

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

Extraordinary.

Variety Leslie Felperin

Sparse, low-budget drama, helmed by Spaniard Isabel Coixet, intelligently translates Roth's meditation on lust and mortality without soft-pedaling its narrator's brutally honest, unabashedly sexist views.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

While excellent in many technical respects, is a muted, pretty, anesthetic concoction that's never fully satisfying.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Elegy is a curious example of misplaced good taste.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Elegy drifts helplessly into melodrama, and it loses its bearings and its head in a ridiculous final act.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

Elegy's last act is a mournful smorgasbord of bathos in which major and supporting characters alike drop like flies. The body count is practically Shakespearean. The same, regrettably, can't be said for Coixet's touch when it comes to tragedy.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

What line is thinner than the one between confession and narcissism? Upon that line, exactly, does Elegy dwell, before tumbling off on the bad side.

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

Cruz's performance deserves to be seen widely, and it should place her again in line for prizes, but the story's pretensions and downbeat mood will not endear the film to audiences.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

A spare, melancholy film that is so far in spirit from its source, Philip Roth's "The Dying Animal."

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

The problem with Elegy has nothing to do with faithfulness and everything to do with interpretation. The film is an overly polite take on a spiky, claustrophobic, insistently impolite novel.

Empire Angie Errigo

While the supporting actors are engaging, the turgid screenplay lets the whole thing down.

Village Voice Ella Taylor

Spanish director Isabel Coixet's hushed and understated Elegy is a flat, joyless affair.

Los Angeles Times Mark Olsen

Elegy seems determined to make real every ageist dig that could be thrown its way -- out of touch, balefully slow and, for a film at least partly about the zesty enterprise of sex, awfully lifeless.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

Roth's works are particularly hard to do justice to onscreen, perhaps because the celebrated author's personality is really in his words

New York Post Linda Stasi

A windbaggy film of Phillip Roth's novella "The Dying Animal."

The average user rating for this movie is 7.3 (out of 10) based on 29 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Albert gave it an8:
Penelope Cruz and Patricia Clarkson, they are the best of this movie. But it isn't the best movie by Isabel Coixet.

Marcy S. gave it a10:
This is an excellent movie...great acting, directing, producing, etc. We were shocked that we had not heard more about it before seeing it.

Lima V. gave it a1:
One of the most gimmicky movies I have ever seen; a stroke, breast cancer, AND a son who hates his father. Love, marriage, sex: all themes explored like they have been for the past four decades in a way that reeked mold and lacked anything truly alive. Besides, the constant piano music weeping in the background was quite irritating.

Max L gave it a7:
Performances are what made the movie watchable. Storywise, it's old and well-travelled already. Patricia Clarkson should be mentioned along Cruz and Kingsley as giving the movie life. Otherwise, it's a real downer as it goes on.

Larry W. gave it a9:
What a beuatifully acted, photographed, edited, intelligenty movie. A little heavy, but if you are a grown up you can't miss it. The acting alone is spectacular.

Larry W. gave it a9:
What a beautifully acted, photographed, edited, intelligently movie. A little heavy, but if you are a grown up you can't miss it. The acting alone is spectacular.

Heidi B gave it a9:
Loved this film. I rarely cry at movies but this one just hit me in a way that many don't. Penelope Cruz was fantastic.

Elegy The Samuel Goldwyn Company

Elegy
The Samuel Goldwyn Company