Sunday, August 24, 2008
A+E, Movies, Reviews

Cruz in control

Two current films showcase talented actress

 By Steve Murray

“Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and “Elegy.”  Two interesting movies, and one reason to see both: Penélope Cruz.

For a few years she was Tom Cruise’s red-carpet arm candy, showing up in mediocre American movies and speaking lines in an English that seemed phonetically learned. Then she returned to Spain, earned a best actress Oscar nomination for “Volver” (2006), and now, in her two new movies, proves that her performance was no fluke.

Cruz doesn’t show up till halfway through “Barcelona.” Up till then, Woody Allen’s flick is perfectly watchable, and loads better than recent efforts like “Cassandra’s Dream” or “Scoop.” Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson play Vicky and Cristina, two Americans in Barcelona who both get involved with Javier Bardem as a smooth-talking painter. (All open-shirted seduction, he’s the antithesis of his villain in “No Country for Old Men.”)

Engaged to a New York businessman, the neurotic Vicky represents the intellectual approach to love, while self-styled sybarite Cristina embodies the emotional. Nothing groundbreaking about this thesis, but Allen rewards us with travelogues of Gaudi architecture, scored to moody Spanish guitar.

Then Cruz shows up and blows the film wide open.

Raccoon-eyed with mascara, a constant cigarette fuming on her lips, she’s Bardem’s passionate, violent ex-wife. Sure, it’s a hot-blooded Latina stereotype, but Cruz sells it with a keep-it-real commitment that’s also often hilarious. (Poor Johansson, gorgeous but lightweight, gets blasted to the sidelines in their scenes together.)

Cruz is less showy but maybe more impressive in “Elegy,” bringing grace and depth to a role that could also be a groaner of a cliché. She plays Consuela, a Cuban-American student who begins sleeping with her professor, New York cultural critic David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley). He’s three decades her senior, but she’s the mature half of the relationship.

David, the long-divorced, estranged father of a doctor (Peter Sarsgaard), keeps Consuela at arm’s length. He assumes she’ll get tired of him and move on—but almost destroys the relationship when he fears she’s about to do just that. Kingsley gives a terrific performance as a self-sabotaging intellectual who thinks Consuela is too good for him. She may be, but her reflected goodness—he realizes maybe too late—is what elevates him into a worthy partner.

“Elegy” is slow moving, but anyone who commits to its autumnal mood will be rewarded. It’s based on Philip’s Roth novel “The Dying Animal,” and Spanish director Isabel Coixet brings a corrective eye  to Roth’s typically male-centered viewpoint. This is an emotionally generous movie about people grasping for happiness, and sometimes having to defeat their own worst instincts to get it.

The cast includes Dennis Hopper as Kingsley’s horndog poet pal, Deborah Harry as Hopper’s long-suffering wife, and Patricia Clarkson as Kingsley’s high-powered, no-strings best-friend-with-benefits.

Clarkson, by the way, is also in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” playing a dissatisfied wife, wistfully watching the young women’s romantic entanglements from a distance. Like Cruz (suddenly), Clarkson is another actor who lifts a movie’s game just by showing up. She’s a second reason both “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and “Elegy” are worth a look. VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA: 3 STARS ELEGY: 3 STARS