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'Elegy'

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BY JOHN ANDERSON | Special to Newsday

August 8, 2008

Ah, the male fantasy: Older men and younger women ( Cary Grant- Grace Kelly, Fred Astaire- Audrey Hepburn, Harrison Ford- Anne Heche) have been commonplace in cinema for about 100 years, and no one was supposed to think twice. In "Elegy" - director Isabel Coixet's soulful, twilit romance based on Philip Roth's "The Dying Animal" - Professor David Kepesh does more than think twice: He thinks and thinks and thinks his way right out of a perfect match with the much younger Consuela Castillo (Penélope Cruz), a woman with a mind of her own.

This, basically, is the crux of Coixet's conflict: Kepesh, played brilliantly by Ben Kingsley, can't grasp the idea that Consuela is perfectly able to make up her own mind, and that his patriarchal, protective self-doubt is needlessly ruining the best thing in both their lives. Cruz is, as usual, a captivating screen presence and gives one of her better performances.

But it's hard not to see the beautifully shot "Elegy" as a boomer male nightmare (and perhaps an inevitable step in the changing way movies look at life): A large part of the population is aging out, mortality is staring them in the face. Given that romance is the real fountain of youth, a lot of men can't escape a sense of desperate uselessness now that the clock is running down. Professor Kepesh is rushing things, of course, but his plight is hardly his alone.

PLOT Literary celebrity falls for much younger woman, and she for him, but he can't help but sabotage himself.

CAST Ben Kingsley, Penélope Cruz, Dennis Hopper, Patricia Clarkson

LENGTH 1:51

PLAYING AT The Angelika Film Center, Lincoln Plaza, Manhattan. Opening Aug. 22 at Cinema Arts Centre, Huntington

BOTTOM LINE Touching, wonderfully acted examination of the corrosive effects of doubt on love.