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Elegy
The Samuel Goldwyn Company

Elegy reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 66 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
7.2 out of 10
based on 32 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 35 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

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: DVD: March 17, 2009 
Theatrical: August 8, 2008 
RUNNING TIME: 113 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

What The Critics Said

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.
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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.
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89
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.
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88
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.
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88
TV Guide Ken Fox
This melancholy mediation on aging and desire hangs on an exquisite performance from Penelope Cruz.
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88
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.
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83
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.
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83
Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell
The film is exquisite on every level, full of sadness and emotional surprise.
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80
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.
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80
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.
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75
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.
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75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
An absorbing but somber drama.
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75
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
As formidable as Kingsley is, Elegy wouldn't work if his object of obsession wasn't worthy of him.
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75
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.
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75
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.
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75
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.
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75
Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Kingsley dims divine Elegy.
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70
Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall
Extraordinary.
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70
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.
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70
Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
While excellent in many technical respects, is a muted, pretty, anesthetic concoction that's never fully satisfying.
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63
Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
Elegy is a curious example of misplaced good taste.
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63
Boston Globe Ty Burr
Elegy drifts helplessly into melodrama, and it loses its bearings and its head in a ridiculous final act.
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50
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.
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50
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.
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50
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.
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50
New York Magazine David Edelstein
A spare, melancholy film that is so far in spirit from its source, Philip Roth's "The Dying Animal."
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50
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.
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40
Empire Angie Errigo
While the supporting actors are engaging, the turgid screenplay lets the whole thing down.
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40
Village Voice Ella Taylor
Spanish director Isabel Coixet's hushed and understated Elegy is a flat, joyless affair.
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40
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.
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40
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
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38
New York Post Linda Stasi
A windbaggy film of Phillip Roth's novella "The Dying Animal."
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What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 7.2 (out of 10) based on 35 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

tdmac gave it a6:
Eh. I don't know. Lacked something for me. The love and lives of intellectuals. I never reached a point where I felt any real compassion for the characters. They all seemed like an IDEA of people to me, not real multidimensional characters. Not a terrible movie...just a bit mediocre.

Brianne gave it a10:
A stunning film,I cried throughout,the acting is superb and the story really is so lovely yet very deep and emotional.I'm really wanting to go and read the book now.This film deserves way more advertisement then it got.

Charles S. gave it a2:
Turned it off. Pretentious.

Jay H gave it a5:
Very strong cast, everyone does a very good job. But I found the film slow and rather boring. I just never got into the film. The characters just weren't that appealing. The direction lacks spark.

Noel T gave it an8:
A beautiful reflection on life, love, mortality, relationships and yes, sex. At first I feared it was just another "Lolita" story (older man/ much younger girl) but I was so wrong. It is a story of passion, love, trust, honesty, fear, regret, loss and discovery. A movie for a mature viewer, maybe someone who has experienced some of the trials of living. Gimmicky movie? I think not!

Thomas M. gave it a10:
A great film about the most basic fear most of us carry deep within--the feeling that we are not worthy of love. Contains one of Sir Ben's greatest performances with stunning cineamatography. A sad, honest, and beautiful film.

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.

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