When they last appeared on our screens, Sir Ben Kingsley was a dope-smoking New York psychiatrist cavorting around the streets of New York (The Wackness), and Penelope Cruz was a polyamorous human hurricane blazing a trail across Spain (Vicky Cristina Barcelona). Elegy, based on a Philip Roth novel and directed by Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet, well and truly takes the spring out of their step. For a movie that’s supposed to be about love, passion and sexual happiness – and is so generous with shots of Penelope Cruz’s breasts – it’s a little surprising just how cold it turns out to be.

Professor David Kepesh (Kingsley) is an expert on American social mores and hedonism: the pursuit of pleasure, especially sexual pleasure, above all else. It’s an area of study that David has done considerable field research into. Many years ago he abandoned his wife and son, who remains bitter, and now regularly indulges in dalliances with female students half his age. One of them, Consuela Castillo (Cruz), a raven-haired Cuban-born beauty, proves to be more than just another fling however. David, baffling even himself with his behaviour, becomes obsessed, jealous, and prone to wallowing in his own adolescent self-pity: how can Consuela love him when she has the rest of her life ahead of her?

David confides in his cynical Pulitzer Prize-winning poet friend George, played by Dennis Hopper. They meet over coffee and during regular games of squash (at least, we are meant to understand that they’re in the middle of playing squash, although nary a squash ball is hit). George is full of pithy advice for David – “Keep the sex part just for sex,” he advises – but ends up the victim of his own personal hedonisms. What scarce lighter moments there are in Elegy come out of these few fleeting scenes with Kingsley and Hopper, and we miss them as soon as they’re over.

‘Artistic’ bedroom scenes notwithstanding, Nicholas Meyer’s screenplay doesn’t even give Kingsley and Cruz the chance to generate any chemistry. Kingsley, particularly, spends most of Elegy staring into the middle distance, presumably contemplating the cruel complexities of love. Standing at his window staring into the middle distance, sitting on his sofa staring into the middle distance, and – how’s this for trite, tired, music clip symbolism – standing still on bustling New York streets staring into the middle distance. Then there’s the shot of a withered leaf falling from a dying plant… What is this, Visual Metaphor 101?

Surprisingly, Coixet manages to resuscitate the story for a poignant and emotional final act – Cruz’s performance is genuinely captivating here – but by then it’s too late. Elegy is just bogged down by its own austerity. For a much better handled take on love in the city, take a look at Coixet’s own ‘Bastille’ segment from Paris je t’aime. How could she get it so right, and then so wrong?

Elegy opens in Australian cinemas on April 9.
You can view the Elegy movie trailer here on TheVine.