shes stilll fudging hot and aslong as she is hot enough to play a 20 year old , its a-oke
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she was fantastic in Volver...
shareJamie Lynn Sigler would have been perfect for this role: intelligent, sexy, part-Cuban, young, etc.
I agree with the original poster that Penelope Cruz, while an able actress, seems a little mature for this character.
Why can't filmmakers cast Roth's female characters more appropriately?
"Er, aren't you a little bit too rude and short sighted to be on this board?"
No.
It seems to me that the OP asks a completely reasonable question. She looks far too old to play a student in the opening half of the film. She still looks perfectly attractive -- this is not a catty remark -- but she doesn't look like the character.
Quite so. Cruz is a competent (perhaps even very good) actress, but she doesn't look young enough for the part. On the other hand, Patricia Clarkson wears her years very well indeed.
shareTotally agree. She is exquisitely beautiful but early on I realized she was supposed to be 22 at MOST and we all know she is well into her 30s. They both acted phenomenally well but I thought it was miscast.
shareIf Penelope Cruz looked any more like a horse, Norm MacDonald would lose a bet on her at the track
shareThe impression I got was a student in her mid-20s. As the narration said, she dressed like a person in a law office, which is what we learn she did. She is described as "austere," and such a bearing does make younger women look older and act older. IAC, this is a very beautiful woman.
shareYes, I could agree: She may be hot but, what about acting? Is smiling = acting? Is that an excuse for not using a 20year old actress for the role instead of just a pretty face to sell tickets? Anyway I don't care that much about Pene's movies 'cause I know for sure they're gonna be Bad... except for Almodovar's "Volver".
What a fool. I've seen ELEGY and she is unbelievable. You obviously are ignorant to quality cinema and taste. Do you homework and next time you won't make such an ass of yourself.
DON'T MOVE (magnificent Cruz performance -- absolutely devastating)
VOLVER (Oscar nominated)
ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (another top notch)
I am free. But life is so cheap.
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I´m from Spain and I´m not according to you at all. Penelope is a great actress with wonderful acting performances in most of her filmography. In "Elegy" is perfect in her role and, in my opinion, her relationship with the Ben Kingsley´s character is absolutely credible thanks to her.
"Pene has made her way through the industry by mating Matthew McConaughey, Tom Cruise, Josh Hartnett... Some merits! ". This is the typical non-sense and envious argument of an Spanish guy influentied by the Spanish gossip tv and press.
Penelope is by far more known and recognised that McConaughey or Hartnett internationally...and, please, any one in the industry gifts roles because of their relationships with other partners??. Is a good example of this the ....ehem... "fimography" of Adrien Brody´s girlfriend?
Your assessment of my tagline about "life" reveals that you are unaware it is a line from a song released nearly 30 years ago. However, this does not surprise me given your misguided remarks about Penelope Cruz.
I'm going to begin by informing of her dual triumphs right now -- Elegy and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (neither of which you have seen). In Elegy, she is haunting, tragic, elusive and controls her scenes (with Ben Kingsley, no less) with great confidence and then sadness late in the film. Do your homework, again, and you will see that she is being lauded for this film.
In Woody Allen's (who obviously recognizes her gifts) Vicky Cristina Barcelona, she steals the picture out from under Scarlett Johansson and Javier Bardem when she enters midway, with a volcanic performance that combines art, sex, comedy and passion in a way that has not been seen in awhile. Expect her to likely get year-end notice for it, and press are taking notice right now. Your critique of her "voice modulation," "mood in talking" and "subtleties of her tone" is exactly what she has been praised for.
Again, I must tell you to watch Don't Move or at least Google the trailer so you can see how astounding her work is, and it was justly praised. As a lower-caste maid being exploited/loved by an affluent and married Italian doctor, she went to depths you rarely see and she is physically unrecognizable, making choices with her gait and voice like most actresses can't imagine. While saying so is not intended as an insult, you are indeed foolish if you believe that her work in Don't Move is not a landmark in her career. You obviously haven't seen it, nor have you seen the audition footage on the DVD. Again, you know not what you speak of here.
I am not an "uneducated" person as you so claim, and I actually work in the film business and take movies and art very seriously, so trolls like you that go to boards simply to take down talented artists do not sit well with me, particularly when you are dead wrong as in this case and have not seen the actresses' body of work. Furthermore, I have been a fan of Almodovar all the way back to Dark Habits and Pepi, Luci, Bom for about 25 years, and seen everything he has done. So I doubt you have a stronger sense of his work as I do. I have even met and interviewed him on two occasions.
Penelope Cruz was used as wallpaper in tepid American films like Woman on Top, All the Pretty Horses, Vanilla Sky, Blow and Captain Corelli's Mandolin, each of which misunderstood how to use her talents and simply focused on her being a fiery Spanish sex symbol, as Hollywood often does. If you had seen any of her early Spanish films like Jamon Jamon (Bigas Luna), Abre Los Ojos and others, you would then educate yourself how misinformed you are. Volver and her Oscar nomination simply speak for themselves.
You are supposedly Spanish, yet you equate a woman who is a respected international actress with a 20-plus year career with American actors she dated for a brief period, which is truly a sign of ignorance -- sorry.
Finally, just for you:
I am free. But life is so cheap.
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Well spoken, totaly agree too, just seen the movie and I was impressed. As well by Don't Move, indeed.
About what you say about that Hollywood used her as a 'fiery spanish sex symbol': I think Vanilla Sky has a proper story-line (I know, I'm the only one in the world) and she did what she had to do in it.
Also, Captain Corelli's Mandolin was made to a well known (and big, omg) book, and made for the people who read it, not to give Penelope a part. Which she took nonetheless and in my opinion took plausible.
But that to the side, you said it all already.
That's all :)
I am a sheep. But life is so free :D
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MEMO TO RTprod: I remember seeing a Spanish movie (sorry, I can't remember the title) where a young man who defected from the Army hides in the home of an old man who has three daughters, one of whom looked remarkably like Penélope Cruz, and (if memory serves me) beds them all. Was PC in such a movie and, if so, what was the name of the film?
shareThat movoe was Belle Epoque...!!
Yes, of course. The film is Belle Epoque (The Age of Beauty). Sorry it took me over three years to respond to your message -- will be really cool if you actually see this...
I am free. But life is so cheap.
This must be the most stupid comment I came across today. If you they are going to be bad, why do you watch them?
Penelope is regarded as one of the best female actreses right now. So many people are talking alot of BS at this site that sometimes you believe they have even seen the movies they are commenting.
I saw Elegy earlier this year at the Seattle International Film Festival. I thought the film was excellent, as were all the performances.
Tbough, I have to admit that the original poster of this thread has a valid question. Penelope's character, if I remember correctly, supposedly was not as young as her college peers... but still she was portrayed as a sort of wide-eyed ingenue at the beginning. To make her look more "youthful" for these early scenes, the filmmakers gave her an odd Betty & Veronica haircut with bangs, which just looked silly and awkward. Luckily later, as her character matures, so does her hair--the glorious Penelope hair that we all know and love finally emerges. :)
Um have you never heard of graduate school?
shareAs someone pointed out, she was a grad student. And in the film she says she worked between college and high school. What aspect of her being too old got in the way of the story?
shareSeems the only pre-requisitie was that she had breasts which Ben Kingsley's character could worship. And, well, I must say she has very good breasts.
sharejinazaki asks, "What aspect of her being too old got in the way of the story?"
The answer is simple: the plot! The first part of the film is all about a 60-something man obsessed with a wide-eyed, *relatively* inexperienced young woman. What attracts the Cruz character to Kingsley -- who is neither handsome, nor energetic, nor easy to be with -- is his intellectual power, his (minor) celebrity, and his knowledge of culture.
While Penelope Cruz may be the most gorgeous 34-year-old woman on the planet, to her credit she *looks* her age. A woman of that age simply would NOT have fallen for the Ben Kingsley character. As a woman who's "been there, done that" I can assure you that it's true.
I think that Cruz did a good job in this film. Why she wanted to take on this role, though, is a mystery, except that perhaps she is friends with the director, a Spanish woman like herself.
From the novel:
It is now eight years ago--I was already sixty-two, and the girl, who is called Consuela Castillo, was twenty-four. She is not like the rest of the class. She doesn't look like a student, at least not like an ordinary student. She's not a demiadolescent, ...
Yeah, I have to say, though I was lukewarm about both "Elegy" and "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," Penelope was astounding in both of them, particularly "VCB." Whoever said she waltzes in and steals the movie right out from under Javier Bardem and Scarlet Johanssen wasn't joking--I was bored for a good 40 minutes and suddenly - bam! - this tornado comes whipping through and just brightens the entire movie, totally changes the tone, the mood, the dynamic of the characters. She's extraordinary in an otherwise pretty forgettable movie, so that's saying a lot.
Her American output was pretty terrible following "All About My Mother," and I rolled my eyes at the mention of her name in a cast for a very long time, but less than ten minutes into "Volver" I was mesmerized. And she's not disappointed me since.
She really did have the body that would reduce her teacher to a gaping mute but I agree with other messages that her character didn't seem believable as far as falling for the guy. Her family was filled with rich, powerful men and she would have been snapped up by any number of eligible Cuban-Americans. She wouldn't have been so easily impressed by original Kafka letters in his apartment, the way other women apparently were.
If you had worked her way through school waitressing and struggled to get to where she was, the Ben Kingsley character would have had much more appeal to her. Or, if she was from a rich family and she was trying to rebel she might have gone for the professor, but more likely would have been attracted to another younger rebel artist or musician, not a professor with a stable career.
Was Cruz too old for the role? I didn't think so. Her age was hinted at, not stated, in the movie (I haven't read the book). She hadn't gone to college immediately after high school, and she was in graduate school, getting her MFA (Master of Fine Arts), so she wouldn't have been younger than 23 or 24 in any case. I figured she was supposed to be in her late 20s, and it's not always easy to guess adults' ages more accurately than 5 years.
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Kingsley is way too old to be paired with Penelope Cruz romantically. It's disgusting. I am so sick of these films about old coots with young beautiful women.And then people ask if SHE is too old? That's just effing ridiculous.
shareI agree, but the question is why do we always have to accept the same actor/actress role after role when they obviously aren't so tremendously good? The medias keep on building their diva's images (for example those ridicolous charts of sexiest women in the world etc.) so that we can't be able to avoid them anymore. Personally I don't like Penelope Cruz's acting in english, I think she is pretty good in her own language and I have seen a few films of her although for the most I don't like the characters she plays and I don't think she has always been that good.
Result: now I avoid films when she is in it, at least when she acts in english. If many would do the same probably their casting agents will stop pushing them everywhere. Does anybody remember Vanilla Sky? God... that was terrible.
Another one is Keira Knightley, but that's another post...