Elegy
Samuel Goldwyn Company, The | Release Date: August 8, 2008 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
66
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 32 Critic Reviews
Positive:
22
Mixed:
9
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
San Francisco ChronicleRuthe Stein
A richly textured and compelling film. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
There's a poetic irony to the idea that it took a female filmmaker to finally do justice to Philip Roth on screen. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Smart and self-deprecating story about love and mortality: It’s merely a winter's tale told with a summer's palette. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
This is an offering for mature viewers thrown out amidst a sea of summer flotsam. The title, Elegy, is perfect for the material. There is much tragedy and truth in what the makers of this movie have brought to the screen. Read full review
88
USA TodayClaudia Puig
True to its title, Elegy is a spare, meditative and melancholy film. It is a deeply affecting and profoundly observed saga about love, art, beauty and, especially, mortality. Read full review
88
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
This melancholy mediation on aging and desire hangs on an exquisite performance from Penelope Cruz. Read full review
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
While this may seem like an apologia for randy older men, it doesn't come off that way, and Cruz gives her best performance to date. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianM. E. Russell
The film is exquisite on every level, full of sadness and emotional surprise. Read full review
80
The New YorkerDavid Denby
The Spanish director Isabel Coixet works with candor, directness, and simplicity. She isn't afraid of lengthy scenes of the two actors just talking to each other, mixed with lavish but respectful attention to Cruz's body, especially her bare chest, which is treated as one of the wonders of all creation. Read full review
80
TimeRichard Schickel
This is a good, serious and absorbing movie -- especially, perhaps, for a reviewer who is roughly Kepesh's age and, of course, eagerly evading the issues his story forces up. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
As an acting showcase that builds to some unexpectedly moving moments, Elegy has much to recommend it. Had Coixet found better ways to connect those moments, she might have REALLY had something to rival what Roth does on the page. Read full review
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
An absorbing but somber drama. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
By the time it's over, Penelope Cruz has slipped away with it, and transformed Kingsley's character in the process. It's nicely done. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
If Coixet's film is substantially more restrained than its explicit source material (Nicholas Meyer, himself a fine novelist and director of the second and best Star Trek film, adapted), it is no less provocative as a poetic meditation on love, sex and death. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
The result, Elegy, isn't a great film but it is a good one, and better for Coixet's perspective, her ability to interpret Roth's world from the other side of the gender fence. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
As formidable as Kingsley is, Elegy wouldn't work if his object of obsession wasn't worthy of him. Read full review
75
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Kingsley dims divine Elegy. Read full review
70
VarietyLeslie Felperin
Sparse, low-budget drama, helmed by Spaniard Isabel Coixet, intelligently translates Roth's meditation on lust and mortality without soft-pedaling its narrator's brutally honest, unabashedly sexist views. Read full review
70
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
While excellent in many technical respects, is a muted, pretty, anesthetic concoction that's never fully satisfying. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderAndrea Gronvall
Extraordinary. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Elegy is a curious example of misplaced good taste. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Elegy drifts helplessly into melodrama, and it loses its bearings and its head in a ridiculous final act. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterRay Bennett
Cruz's performance deserves to be seen widely, and it should place her again in line for prizes, but the story's pretensions and downbeat mood will not endear the film to audiences. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
A spare, melancholy film that is so far in spirit from its source, Philip Roth's "The Dying Animal." Read full review
50
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
The problem with Elegy has nothing to do with faithfulness and everything to do with interpretation. The film is an overly polite take on a spiky, claustrophobic, insistently impolite novel. Read full review
50
Washington PostStephen Hunter
What line is thinner than the one between confession and narcissism? Upon that line, exactly, does Elegy dwell, before tumbling off on the bad side. Read full review
50
Film ThreatRick Kisonak
Elegy's last act is a mournful smorgasbord of bathos in which major and supporting characters alike drop like flies. The body count is practically Shakespearean. The same, regrettably, can't be said for Coixet's touch when it comes to tragedy. Read full review
40
EmpireAngie Errigo
While the supporting actors are engaging, the turgid screenplay lets the whole thing down. Read full review
40
Village VoiceElla Taylor
Spanish director Isabel Coixet's hushed and understated Elegy is a flat, joyless affair. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesMark Olsen
Elegy seems determined to make real every ageist dig that could be thrown its way -- out of touch, balefully slow and, for a film at least partly about the zesty enterprise of sex, awfully lifeless. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
Roth's works are particularly hard to do justice to onscreen, perhaps because the celebrated author's personality is really in his words Read full review
38
New York PostLinda Stasi
A windbaggy film of Phillip Roth's novella "The Dying Animal." Read full review
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