Elegy

Except for the main character’s name and the title credits, you would hardly imagine this film was adapted from a Philip Roth novel. The situation might be recognizable but the scathingly witty authorial voice is nowhere heard, despite some half-hearted narration. Aging satyr Ben Kingsley teaches at Columbia (in an earlier Roth novel David Kepesh was The Professor of Desire, though in this The Dying Animal) and commentates on culture for public television and highbrow magazines. He has a satisfactory shag-&-run relationship with Patricia Clarkson, but regularly lets young ladies graduate from his classroom to his bedroom. Penelope Cruz proves (understandably) to be more than a passing fancy, however. He turns for advice to his only friend, a Pulitzer-winning poet played by Dennis Hopper, while on the other side he is hounded by resentful son Peter Sarsgaard. With such a cast and such a provenance, this film is certainly watchable but hardly memorable. Without getting all sexist about it, I wonder if a Spanish woman -- Isabel Coixet -- is the ideal director to get across the Rothian worldview? (2008, dvd, n.) *6* (MC-66.)