A GREAT date movie is not necessarily a movie about dating, or relationships, or any movie that comes close to examining sexual relations. A good relationship movie (an effective one, anyway) is more likely to be a film you'd actively avoid with an a
ctual date – so if someone invites you over to watch The Ice Storm, Lust, Caution or Todd Solondz's Happiness, consider yourself warned.
If you are a shy romantic, it's hard enough truffling out an innocuous movie from the mainstream offerings: my first ever movie date was an outing to Monty Python's Meaning Of Life and although we were supposed to repair afterwards for coffee at a Wimpy, we were so mortified by the robust singalong 'Every Sperm Is Sacred' that we ended up just going home and never seeing each other again.
Elegy is another movie that is best seen without the one you love, since it is based on a Philip Roth novella. Usually it's a toss-up between John Updike and Roth as to who's the most eloquent male chauvinist, but Roth more readily employs shock tactics.
Catalan director Isabel Coixet has tempered his novella's title from The Dying Animal to Elegy, and she also softens Roth's misogyny, although there's still plenty left over: "When you make love to a woman, you get revenge for all the things that defeated you in life," gloats Kepesh (Ben Kingsley), sounding like Swiss Toni with a library card.
An elderly Jewish lothario and intellectual celebrity, Kepesh relishes his independence and is dismissive of family life. Since his divorce, he has maintained a lustily hedonistic lifestyle and had numerous affairs with students.
His target this time is a Cuban named Consuela Castillo (Penélope Cruz), who he compliments at his end-of-term party for her "elegant austerity". Believe me, men: this is not a line that usually shifts the gears of a woman's heart, especially if, like the ripe Consuela, you have all the austerity of a well-buttered muffin.
Still, the seduction works, although for once it does not produce the usual result. It is Kepesh who is infatuated and degrades himself, while Consuela is only mildly interested in him. While claiming to be free of relationship ties, he has to face up to his obsession, as well as the reproaches of his only son Kenny (Peter Sarsgaard), who has popped by to remind his dad what a rotter he was to abandon both his wife and son once the 1960s started to swing.
Elegy may please some with its gruff fantasies about female and sexual fulfilment, but others may lose patience with its ponderousness, and the claustrophobic focus on free-spirited babes prepared to stab the Dickens out of an Oscar-winning thespian.
There are redeeming features – the humour, mostly from Dennis Hopper – but ultimately this is a unique time at the art house: a work that appears to be a Nuts article masquerading as a dissertation. Elegy feels skimpy, partly because Kepesh himself is such a charmless old stiff. For all his dinosaur patter and slick casuistry, he hasn't much of interest to say about sex, death and male-female relations, and none of it gets in your head or under your skin. It does, however, get on your nerves.
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On release from FridayThe full article contains 560 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
