- Title: GERMANY: Penelope Cruz and Ben Kingsley play lovers in their new film "Elegy"
- Date: 13th February 2008
- Summary: ACTRESS PENELOPE CRUZ POSING FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS, SIGNING AUTOGRAPHS
- Embargoed: 28th February 2008 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Germany
- Country: Germany
- Reuters ID: LVA47F1SF7U2SEWY3RCDL1Y36FQN
- Story Text: Penelope Cruz and Ben Kingsley team up in a movie based on Philip Roth's short novel "The Dying Animal", about a charismatic and selfish professor who loses his composure when he falls in love with a student half his age.
"Elegy", which premieres at the Berlin Film Festival on Sunday (February 10), deals with universal themes of love, death and illness, and portrays beauty as a burden as well as a blessing.
It also seeks to show that growing old does not necessarily mean growing up, as Kingsley's character, David Kepesh, preserves his independence while failing to overcome impulses of jealousy and doubt that threaten to undermine the relationship.
The movie, which will be released later this year, is directed by Spain's Isabel Coixet.
British actor Kingsley, 64, said it was Kepesh's vulnerability which attracted him to the role.
"It is me at my most vulnerable, so it's a real test, I feel like a gladiator, it's either going to be thumbs up or thumbs down, we'll see," he said at the premiere.
It is indeed a character he can empathise with - last year Kingsley married a Brazilian former waitress half his age. The 34-year-old Daniela Barbosa de Carneiro is his fourth wife.
As his character, Kepesh, loses control of his emotions, Cruz's character, Consuela Castillo, grows in confidence and towards the end remarks that she feels older than him.
Spaniard Cruz, 33, was asked whether she felt she had to work harder as an actress to dispel suspicions she was cast mainly for her looks.
"I don't think about my career in those terms, I have been looking at that from the beginning since I was seventeen years old, and I have been very lucky, very privileged and very grateful for all the great roles that they have given me from the beginning, some better than others."
Wearing a long, figure-hugging black dress with a train, said she had wanted to play the character of Consuela for years.
While there is plenty of humour, particularly in scenes when Kepesh and his friend, played by Dennis Hopper, swap advice about love on the squash court or in the sauna, sickness, death and a strained father-son relationship hang over the story.
Kingsley appears for the second time at the festival this year, which runs from Feb. 7-17. He also stars in "TransSiberian", a Hitchcock-inspired thriller set on board a train across Russia. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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