'Elsa & Fred' review: A worthy remake

Watching Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer at work in the late-inning romance "Elsa & Fred," one can't help but get with its message -- that it's never too late to live lustily, throw erotic caution to the wind, do what you love, love whom you want. Directed and rewritten by Michael Radford ("Il Postino," "The Merchant of Venice" with Al Pacino) it's a remake of sorts of the 2005 Argentine crowd-pleaser "Elsa y Fred," but as Americanized by its British filmmaker it's also a showcase for two oldish pros, and a crowd-pleaser with just enough edge to tickle the intellect.

Elsa (MacLaine) moves into the apartment building -- and life -- of Fred (Plummer) like an F4 hurricane, throwing his world into disarray and profoundly disturbing his peace. Fred has settled into what may not be a very long decrepitude -- he seems to perversely welcome the dying of the light, while complaining bitterly about it, nonetheless. Elsa, conversely, is a wild spirit who obsesses about, among other things, the Trevi fountain scene in Fellini's "La Dolce Vita," with herself replacing the bounteous Anita Ekberg. Predicting how Radford might wind up the movie won't require a lot of effort.

But en route to its watery climax, "Elsa & Fred" paints an entertaining and somewhat poignant portrait of graceful aging. The octogenarian actors are a delight, but the film also positions its characters as inhabitants of an island that the elderly have to inhabit on their own -- much like teenagers in a John Hughes film. Yes, they may have families, they may have younger friends, but the experience of being at the short end of one's long life is something only they can share with each other.

Fortunately, the particular joyousness of "Elsa & Fred" does not require an AARP card.