Bitterness Tastes Too Sweet

Here's the thing with movies that hinge on terminal illness: You spend most of the time waiting for someone to die. This is no way to spend 108 minutes in the dark. Movies dealing with the specter of death and dying can be magnificent, inspiring like last year's "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly." Movies hinging on death feel kind of gross, like they'll rot your teeth.

"Elsa & Fred" is more tactful than most, but all the sugary drama still comes from knowing one of them has an imminent expiration date.

So we wait as these 70-somethings meet in Madrid. Fred is a reserved widower. Elsa is the feisty neighbor who dreams of reenacting the Trevi Fountain scene from "La Dolce Vita." We wait as one of them, in private, exhibits signs of illness early in the film, and the other carries on like a teenager in love, deprived of the knowledge we have.

It feels cheap, not at all the style of Uruguayan actress China Zorrilla and her Spanish co-star, Manuel Alexandre, who play the title characters with innocence and earnestness.

Fellini's 1960 film is a touchstone for Elsa, who has always dreamed of visiting the Trevi Fountain in Rome to re-create the scene in which Sylvia coaxes the gossip columnist Marcello into the water.

The Fellini parallel deserves a more thoughtful, graceful movie, perhaps one that doesn't deflate like watery souffle when set against the ornate layer cake of "La Dolce Vita."

"Elsa & Fred" feels not substantial enough to bear the weight of its themes. It dissolves like cotton candy, making proper digestion impossible. The life it shows us is too sweet.

-- Dan Zak

Elsa & Fred PG, 106 minutes Contains adult themes and language. In Spanish with subtitles. At Landmark's Bethesda Row and Cinema Arts Fairfax.