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ELSA & FRED Send This Review to a Friend
You don’t have to be a senior citizen to enjoy “Elsa & Fred,” a lovely, moving and spirited film import set in Spain and directed and co-written by Argentine filmmaker Marcos Carnevale. It is a beautiful romantic story of two seniors of different temperaments that looms, according to my standards, as one of the best films of 2008. It boasts two terrific award-caliber performances, one flamboyant, the other exquisitely subtle, both meshing to make one root for this couple to find happiness in their remaining years.
China Zorrilla as Elsa, a widow, is a larger-than-life dynamo who takes over a room whenever she enters. She has no compunction about lying when it suits her, whether about family or a fender-bender. Memories of her having been a knockout of a looker back in Argentina linger in her self-perception. She has fancied herself as having resembled Anita Ekberg in “La Dolce Vita” and has imagined herself wading in the Fountain of Trevi while in love with Marcello Mastroianni—a life-long fantasy for her.
Having just moved next door in the Madrid apartment building where she now lives is Fred, a widower, played with reserve by Manuel Alexandre. Fred is reclusive and depressed following the loss of his wife. His manipulative daughter hopes that he’ll provide money for a venture that her loser of a husband wants to undertake.
When Elsa sets her eyes on him, Fred gradually falls under her spell and finds himself attracted to her outrageous but engaging personality. The attention she lavishes on him and which ensnares him little by little has the effect of bringing him out of his despondency and leading him to engage with life again. We watch the process of their growing closeness and the tenderness developing between them. Fred is helplessly falling in love with Elsa, even in the face of her lies, whether big ones or little ones, and her talent at manipulation, and the effect is rejuvenation of his persona.
The film is rich in humor along with its warmth and becomes an entertaining demonstration that love can blossom even in later years. You may be able to predict the direction of the story, co-scripted with Carnevale by Lily Ann Martin and Marcela Guerty, but when the lovers get there, the sequence turns out to be a thorough delight. Elsa and Fred are the most appealing, romantic couple on screen at the moment, a model projecting insight for old and young moviegoers alike because it peers so effectively into our need to love and be loved at whatever stage of life we find ourselves. A Mitropoulos Films release.
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