Elegy
(USA) drama/romance 108 mins M September 12
Driven by Isabel Coixet’s visually assured and deeply observant direction, Elegycharts the passionate relationship between a celebrated college professor and a young woman whose beauty both ravishes and destabilises him. However, this isn’t a conventional romance between an ageing man and a woman more than 30 years his junior, although the narrative does turn on those customary elements of jealousy, envy and suspicion. It is about social change in a troubled America, about ageing and physical deterioration, the desire that exceeds the possibilities of sexual performance.
With warmth, wry wit and erotic intensity, Elegy explores the power of beauty to blind, to reveal and to transform. Starring Oscar-nominee Penelope Cruz and Academy Award-winner Ben Kingsley, Elegyis based on Pulitzer Prize-winner Philip Roth’s short novel The Dying Animal.
Tulpan
(Kazakhstan/Germany/Poland/Russia/Switzerland) drama 100min M September 26
Winner Un Certain Regard Cannes Film Festival 2008 Asa, a young man returning to his family on the harsh Kazakh steppe, has decided not to head for the city with his best friend, but to pursue a long-cherished dream to ownand tend his own flock of sheep. The herder’s life doesn’t come easily to Asa, nor courtship of the lovely Tulpan, and we empathise with him as he strives to become a man, but in his boyish eagerness, keeps tripping himself up! The director succeeds in making the sounds, smells and simple pleasures of the steppe palpable, from the dust and wide expanse of the landscape to the homeliness and warmth of the family’s traditional yurt home. This film offers us fascinating ethnographic detail, gentle humour and spectacular cinematography.
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