leplatypus At the basic, it's a love story that has all the beautiful moments and the difficult ones as well that every lover has met. Sometimes the down time are ephemeral, other times they are definitive… In that way, the movie is interesting, all the more than Penelope is really illuminating and totally charming with her sweet English accent ! But they wanted to do in the American way so the lover can't be an ordinary man but a famous professor ! Things deteriorate when this couple can't be from the same generation as this professor is an old fetishist pervert ! Worse is coming as he is played by the poor Kingsley who has completely forgotten than « Gandhi » and « Schindler » were great as he underplayed ! Now he wants to be bombastic and fails miserably ! Next we really goes into disgusting things as this professor appreciates talking his sexual performances with a same licentious friend played by the awful Hopper ! To finish this stinker, it illustrates the same trend that we see in french movies : this upper class totally obsessed with sex is just a miserable bunch of hypocrites as they always find a pretext to get women nude : sometimes, it's art, sometimes, it's health : here it's the two combined in a sick way ! When you think that it's all they can deliver with their education, positions and money, it's just appalling !!!!

geekerr Poorly cast movie Penelope Cruz comes across as a complete airheadShe is so superficial and unauthentic as can be this is Hollywood at its worstTotally self indulgentCruz has no on screen chemistry what so everThis was movie that had some potential but the direction in consort with the shallowness of Crus acting made it a wasteShe can't play a school girl at all it is laughable and a waste of timeHer character is completely affective dull and blandThere is no way the Kingsley character could find her attractive

Lawson Lawson Life with crossroads happen. Every person has a crossroad to define the next segment of our lives, either the road not taken or the risk of judgment makes cowards of us all. Wisdom comes from truthfully looking back at those choices and helping the next generation. Kingsley's character has the choice comes at the invitation to a party. Whether it is nobler to join our friends in the decision to join their choices or hide away and hope the fix happens without them.If you can imagine the noblest among us having difficulty dealing with these decisions, you can imagine us mere mortals frozen by the same choice. The answer is to know the difference between the week and the weekend, the importance of the work of our life and the course of our lives. To bear the brunt of the slings and arrows of our heart or jump into a life not known we all know. To enjoy the pursuit of happiness for whatever short time we have or to chicken out in the comfortable world we have created. Choose the bold, is the lesson this movie teaches me. Aim for the top even if you are just a teacher on TV. It's Penelope Cruz for crying out loud and every minute it lasts has a chance to be the best life can bring. Their are so many parties we have decided to skip even though we know afterwards, when the pain in our chest subsides, we will be stronger for the decision, no matter the foolishness it may present.

RobertR Kirschten As many of the reviewers on this page have noted, the movie "Elegy" is beautifully filmed, stunningly acted, and ferociously under-motivated. It is the story of a much older professor and his much younger student, who pass through each other's lives with minimal emotional contact with each other and virtually none to engage the viewer. I find both characters superficial, foggy, and distant. Is that the point of the film? Penelope Cruz is pretty, fresh, and shallow. What does the professor, Ben Kingsley, see in her? A diversion only? His rhetoric promises more, but what? He is pompous, cold, old, and filled with NYC intellectual abstractions that are thinly disguised veils for his creepy (read "cultural critic") narcissism. Is she simply deluded in her interest in him and he so "self-individuated" as to be rigidly remote? Where is real feeling here? As for story structure, two deus-ex-diseases--Hopper's stroke and her cancer--are more than my tolerance for fatalistic sentimentality can bear. At the end, when she is dying (I presume) of her disease and the professor crawls into her bed at the hospital, it would not surprise me if Ryan O'Neal and Ali McGraw joined them.