ELEGY - intelligent, emotionally brutal drama

ELEGY is a well-made, brilliantly acted, intelligent and moving drama by Spanish director Isabel Coixet and based on a novel by Philip Roth. It stars Ben Kingsley as an ageing academic with a penchant for sleeping with his students. More seriously, he has devoted his life to becoming truly independent, at the expense of his relationship with his son and a certain loneliness. The professor starts an affair with a stunning young student (Penelope Cruz). He is mesmerised by her beauty and frightened by the fact that he will never truly possess her. His flaws are to objectify her - think of her as unknowable - and to assume that she will leave him. This last is fatal. She is, in fact, remarkably self-assured, and prepared to brave society's scorn by introducing her older lover to her conservative family. *He* is the one who lacks faith, breaking her heart in the process. This act, so true to life, comes roughly half way into the film and the remainder of the movie is about how he comes to terms with his decision, his relationship with his son, and his relationship with the girl. There are no epiphanies or neat endings, but genuine character development and brutal emotional encounters.

Ben Kingsley gives a nuanced performance and has a real rapport with his unjudgmental best friend (Dennis Hopper) and, finally, with his son (Peter Sarsgaard). But the lynchpin of the film, and the real achievement, is that the relationship between Kinglsey and Cruz is utterly believable. We believe that they both find each other attractive and have a complicated, evolving relationship, despite the age difference. Cruz, in particular is superb as the student. Watch her reaction in the key episode at the centre of the film, and feel the tragedy of a photo-shoot near the end of the film. It's an award-winning performance. In addition, I would single out Patricia Clarkson for praise in her cameo role as a self-assured business woman. It's always a pleasure to see an older woman portrayed on screen as successful and sexually attractive.

ELEGY played Berlin 2008 and was released in Spain earlier this year. It is currently on release in the UK, US and Canada and opens next weekend in Austria, Germany and Russia. It opens on August 28th in the Netherlands; on September 13th in the Czech Republic; on October 22nd in Belgium; on November 27th in Mexico; and on December 4th in Argentina.

UNION CITY - brings new meaning to the term "art movie"

UNION CITY is a bizarre little (by which I mean comparatively short) film-noir made by the artist Markus Reichert and released back in 1980. Today it is notable for the surreal, tense atmosphere achieved on zero budget and the screen debut of Debbie Harry. On the release of a shiny new DVD edition, I am here to plead its case for viewing outside the cultish band of noir-film-makers and David Lynch fans.

The movie features Dennis Lipscomb as Harlan, a paranoid, repressed accountant, living in Jersey, with his beautiful wife, played by Debbie Harry. Lipscomb becomes obsessed with the mystery man who keeps stealing the milk bottles from outside his house and concocts elaborate plans to entrap said thief. Meanwhile, his neglected wife starts pleasuring herself, not to mention carrying on with the super, played by Everett McGill. The plots sounds absurd, but somehow Reichert manages to maintain a serious tone to the piece. This is partly thanks to his use of small sets and odd camera angles. It always feels like the camera has been squeezed into a small corner, and that the viewer is a voyueur. The creeping sense of claustrophobia lends credibility to Liscomb's inceasing paranoia. Kudos to cameraman, Edward Lachman, who made this possible. In this low budget flick we have a small taste of the kind of work we'd later see in movies such as The Virgin Suicides, Far From Heaven, and the marvellous new Robert Altman movie, A Prairie Home Companion. In addition, praise is due to the score by Chris Stein.

I should make it clear that, even after being cleaned up, the DVD print does look pretty dated, and one suspects that this is just because the production values on the original shoot were constrained by lack of hard cash. In addition, the acting performances, dialogue and substance of the film are highly stylised: this is an art movie in a true sense of the term, and closer to, say, Eraserhead than Blue Velvet. I have to say that technical defects and obvious absurdity aside, the film does suck you in. You want to know who is stealing the milk, you want to know what Lipscomb will do, you want to know if Debbie Harry will finally break out of her stultifying marriage. Why? Like I said, the tone of the piece is right. But secondly, artifice aside, UNION CITY is one of the most honest portraits of a bad marriage that I have seen on screen. It resonates. And that makes it, for me, a successful film.

UNION CITY is available on a newly cleaned-up DVD complete with Debbie Harry's original screen test and previously unseen deleted scenes.