Susan Granger’s review of “Elsa & Fred” (Distrimax Inc & Mitropoulos Films)
Set in Madrid, this timelessly sublime romantic comedy about the irresistible power and total madness of passion focuses on two elderly people who discover it’s never to late to love and to dream.
When recently widowed Alfredo (Manuel Alexandre) moves into a new apartment, his new neighbor, ebullient Argentinean Elsa (China Zorrilla), is intrigued. That she backed her car into one belonging to his volatile daughter Cuca (Blanca Portillo), smashing her headlights, only serves as an introduction. After all, he has a dog named Napoleon Bonaparte and she lives in apartment J, as in Josephine. Plus, they both have controlling offspring. Hers are two sons, one a penniless painter. His is Cuca and her out-of-work husband Paco, who is trying to manipulate Alfred into investing in a cybercafé.
“Have you had any laughs?” Elsa boldly asks shy, reserved Alfred, an admitted hypochondriac. “You’re not afraid of dying. You’re afraid of living,” she observes astutely. “I’m your only salvation.”
So their love affair begins. With her active imagination, Elsa’s determined to enjoy every minute and Alfred discovers all he’s been missing in life. As their relationship ripens, Alfredo learns that Elsa is not only a Fellini fanatic but has always dreamed of re-enacting that magical moment from “La Dolce Vida” between Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni in Rome’s Trevi Fountain. If not now, when?
Directed by Marcos Carnevale from a screenplay by Carnevale, Lily Ann Martin, Marcela Guerty and Jose Antonio Felez, it’s brilliantly acted by the two septuagenarians who wallow in shameless sentimentality. In Spanish with English subtitles, on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Elsa & Fred” is an exuberant, thoroughly entrancing 8. As Pablo Picasso said, “It takes a long time to become young.”
