A richly textured and compelling film.

There's a poetic irony to the idea that it took a female filmmaker to finally do justice to Philip Roth on screen.

Smart and self-deprecating story about love and mortality: It's merely a winter's tale told with a summer's palette.

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.

This melancholy mediation on aging and desire hangs on an exquisite performance from Penelope Cruz.

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.

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.

The film is exquisite on every level, full of sadness and emotional surprise.

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.

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.

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.

An absorbing but somber drama.

As formidable as Kingsley is, Elegy wouldn't work if his object of obsession wasn't worthy of him.

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.