Elegy and Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

"Elegy is a spare, melancholy film that is so far in spirit from its source, Philip Roth's The Dying Animal, that I'm tempted to say we should abandon altogether the idea of adapting Roth," writes David Edelstein in New York. A few paragraphs later, he pauses and adds, "Reading back, I see this is a rather harsh review of a movie made with intelligence and taste. But taste - at least when it's this refined - is an obstacle to getting at the explosive hunger in every line of The Dying Animal." One of his problems: "[Penélope] Cruz does a hilarious turn as a hellcat in Woody Allen's upcoming Vicky Cristina Barcelona, so you can't blame her (or [Ben] Kingsley) for the glacial pacing of her scenes."

The New Yorker's David Denby see both films quite differently (Elegy opens Friday; Vicky on August 15). He welcomes Elegy's pace: "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."

Updated through 8/5.

The strength of Elegy for Denby, though, comes from Kingsley: "Of all the good actors who have adorned the middle-aged-professor films, including Michael Douglas (The Wonder Boys), Anthony Hopkins (The Human Stain), Jeff Daniels (The Squid and the Whale), Frank Langella (Starting Out in the Evening), Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Savages), Dennis Quaid (Smart People) and Richard Jenkins (The Visitor), Ben Kingsley... is the most formidable and convincing."

As for Woody Allen's movie, "Cruz has never done anything like this: with her downturned mouth and wild black hair, she looks witchy and unbeautiful." But Denby seems to have enjoyed watching all the bodies in motion here: "[Javier] Bardem's natural-born lover - a painter, by trade - is as devastating as his natural-born killer in No Country for Old Men. He's almost criminally attractive.... The way the women play against Bardem is fascinating." Besides Cruz, these would be Rebecca Hall, "radiant one minute and neurotic, tense, and gloomy the next," and Scarlett Johansson, still "at a stage in which her sensuality is more developed than anything else in her personality, but that configuration works for her this time."

Ed Gonzalez in Slant on Elegy: "The Spanish director gives an almost Wongian expression to the way people seduce one another, pondering the manner in which fingertips dance across the surface of things and Cuban-born Consuela leans against a wall, her ass teasing the hungry eyes of her ex-professor, David Kepesh.... Even when her angles and cutting begin to feel like too much dithering, Coixet never loses her sense of humor, succinctly acknowledging during in a great scene where BS literally kills a character that artists should stay as true to their art as men like David and George [Dennis Hopper] should to the sexual agency society tells them they shouldn't flex."

Back in New York, Logan Hill profiles Kingsley and finds him "maddeningly and willfully vague about why he decided to play Kepesh, out of so many characters, so close to himself. 'I'm struggling to find a rational reason for this,' he admits. 'I don't think there is one.'"

For the Los Angeles Times, Michael Ordoña talks with Coixet: "'People always talk about chemistry,' Coixet said. 'You cannot direct that. It clicks or it doesn't click. The first thing we shot was the scene where they were walking in the street, just shopping,' she said by phone from Spain. 'They walked exactly like a man who is proud to be with a younger woman and a woman who is just in love and mesmerized with someone. You could even feel that when we were looking at their backs.'"

Earlier: Reviews of Vicky Cristina Barcelona from Cannes.

Update: Glenn Kenny "was more than a little impressed with [Elegy] in spite of the fact that, while in many ways faithful to its source, it wasn't particularly Rothian. But the film... was nevertheless frank, funny, moving, and possessed a consistent but non-ostentatious intelligence that's extremely refreshing given our current cinematic situation. Both Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz gave performances that could creditably be called 'brave,' and I say that as someone who generally believes that characterization never truly applies.... Elegy does in fact forsake Roth's rawness from the title change on down. But, especially given the anti-adult bent of so many films these days, it provides ample enough rewards in exchange for it."

PopMatters' Bill Gibron bids farewell to Woody Allen once and for all: "I'll gladly have cinematic egg on my face should this prolific 73 year old regain his aesthetic footing. Until then, I'll resign myself to the past. It's what any new divorcee would do."

Updates, 8/5: For Alonso Duralde, writing at MSNBC, Elegy "feels like the first English-language narrative film candidate for my year-end best list. Sensitively directed by the talented Isabel Coixet - a Spanish director who's a master at somber, rainy-day-at-the-rocky-beach movies - the film spins its tale of love and loss in a way that feels simultaneously shattering and hopeful."

Online listening tip. Ambrose Heron talks with Kingsley.

Posted by dwhudson at August 4, 2008 6:10 AM