Philadelphia Weekly

New Releases

Elegy
Directed by Isabel Coixet
C
Reviewed by Matt Prigge
Opens Fri., Aug. 22

Philip Roth has never been ashamed of delving into his earthquaking libido, especially not as a horny septagenarian. But is there any way to temper his 2001 unabashed male fantasy novel The Dying Animal? Apparently not.

Hell, not even hiring a woman to direct it--Spanish director Isabel Coixet (My Life Without Me)--can do much to dampen Roth's tale of an aging professor getting it on with one of his hot former students.

Retitled Elegy and written by Nicholas Meyer (Time After Time, Star Treks II and VI), Coixet's adaptation stars Ben Kingsley as David Kepesh, one of Roth's recurring alter egos--a distinguished member of Manhattan's literati first seen rapping with Charlie Rose about the sad decline of '60s American hedonism. His body increasingly frail, he nonetheless manages to start a (probably doomed) relationship with Cuban-American hottie Consuela (Pen�lope Cruz), all the while confiding in best pal Dennis Hopper, who's hilariously miscast as a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.

Physically, Kingsley may seem an odd choice for a Roth lead, but he delivers a wry, alert performance that masterfully blends comedy with his character's self-importance.

Coixet is a different story. Roth's take on Kepesh is akin to a funhouse mirror. Kepesh justifies his actions by recognizing that he hates himself for justifying them.

But Coixet buys right into Kepesh's egomania. She's the type of filmmaker who plays, without a trace of irony, the music of Erik Satie and Arvo P�rt--the most obvious choice ever for morose introspection--over scenes of lovemaking or brooding.

Occasionally Coixet switches the perspective to Cruz's Consuela--quite good, even though, as usual, Cruz's difficulty with the English language holds her back--but too often Coixet simply shows her as Kepesh sees her: as a piece of art, meant to be honored but little more. Coixet manages to make Consuela's final act, which ought to be the ultimate in jilted male wet dreams, just slightly more about Consuela than about Kepesh.

Elegy also includes an amazing scene with Patricia Clarkson--as Kepesh's (almost) age-appropriate mistress--in which she decimates his need for a hot young thang over someone who genuinely knows and cares about him. This scene would carry a lot more weight if she wasn't promptly booted from the film. Woman at the helm and all, Elegy is still very much a boy's club.

Frozen River
Directed by Courtney Hunt
B
Reviewed by Matt Prigge
Opens Fri., Aug. 22

You get no points for correctly predicting that Frozen River's own frozen river--iced over so solidly that one character swears a car can cross it safely--will later cave in at precisely the wrong/right dramatic moment. The real question is: Will the movie cave in too?

First-time writer/director Courtney Hunt clearly intends for this iced waterway to be a metaphor for the delicate predicament a dirt-broke middle-aged mother of two (Melissa Leo) finds herself in--that is, smuggling illegal immigrants from Canada to dreary upstate New York. But it also makes for a handy metaphor for Frozen River itself, an old-school regional indie that constantly seems like it'll collapse into preciousness, but for the longest damn time, simply doesn't.

Best known for being the actress who actually deserved an Oscar nom for 21 Grams, Leo is introduced with a close-up on her tear- and pain-streaked face, the camera unblinkingly capturing her wrinkles and long, unshampooed hair.

Roughly a half-hour passes before we're given all the details: Her gambling addict husband has disappeared, presumably off the wagon, with a couple thousand dollars originally intended for a new house with better insulation. (And with a week till Christmas, no less.) Such dire circumstances team her with a young, tough but fragile Mohawk woman (Misty Upham), who initiates her into the shady underworld of human smuggling, a sidebar for some of the area's Native Americans.

Like many earnest indies, Frozen River runs into some major snags in its third act, even as it winds into a finale that just narrowly avoids bleakness without selling out. Hunt knows how to swerve away from indie cliches, and she paints a dark portrait not only of desolate America but the capitalist machine at its most primal. In Frozen River no one has any money and to get some, they'll step over anyone. Even the film's climactic act of selflessness is tempered by the fact that the person making it makes sure they still, at the end, come out mostly okay.