Variety‘s Leslie Felperin reviewed Elegy out of the Berlin Film Festival two nights ago, but I somehow missed it until this morning. It isn’t a rave — I can feel a certain hesitancy — but it’s definitely a thumbs-up response. Key passage: “Scenes unfold in a series of near-musical dialogue duets, with Ben Kingsley offering finely-phrased arias of self-deprecation and despair. Despite the age difference, he and Penelope Cruz (who’s never been better in English) look somehow chemically balanced and credible as a couple in a way Nicole Kidman and Anthony Hopkins never did in The Human Stain.”
got it wrong Sunday morning when I wrote that the drama (which also stars Dennis Hopper, Patricia Clarkson and Peter Sarsgaard) was being called The Dying Animal, after the Phillip Roth book that the script is based upon. It’s a shame that it’s not. Elegy means nothing — it’s an all-but-meaningless, watered-down wimp title. I’ll bet they went with Elegy because Craig Lucas‘s The Dying Gaul was still-born at the box office when it opened in ’06. Any title with the word “dying”…forget it.