The Specter of Death Overshadows 'Elsa & Fred'

Here's the thing with movies that hinge on terminal illness: You spend most of the runtime waiting for someone to die. That's the payoff. Death. This is no way to spend 108 minutes in the dark. Movies dealing with the specter of death and dying can be magnificent, inspiring. Bergman's "Cries and Whispers." Last year's "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly." (No, we're not including "Beaches.") Movies hinging on death feel kind of gross, like they'll rot your teeth. "Elsa & Fred" is more tactful than most -- "Dying Young" laid it all out there with its title -- but all the sugary drama still comes from knowing one of them has an imminent expiration date.

So we wait. We wait as these 70-somethings meet cute 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 they embark on a relationship. 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. Fred is no fuss. Elsa is all fuss. Fred is afraid of living. Elsa is afraid of dying. They trade barbs and confessions and lies and insecurities and platitudes.

Zorrilla and Alexandre barely need to act because the movie does it all for them. The dialogue serves solely at the pleasure of the plot, which slinkies down steps we see coming a mile away. Elsa and Fred's courtship is overlit and underthought, and accented with a syrupy synthesized score -- heavy on wistful piano, soaring arpeggios substituting for real emotions. It looks and feels like a telenovela, especially because it's intercut with iconic shots from "La Dolce Vita."

Fellini's 1960 film serves as a touchstone for Elsa, whose beauty was once as staggering as that of Anita Ekberg, the Swedish actress who played the adored movie star Sylvia. Elsa 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. "Sylvia, who are you?" Marcello asks, unable to touch her before the water stops running, the sound cuts out, dawn arrives and the moment is shattered. (Semi-spoiler alert: When Elsa and Fred do get to Rome -- you knew they would -- the movie hiccups with newfound liveliness. Who doesn't want to see two aging stars re-create a great moment in cinema? But from all that hasn't come before it, the moment feels unearned.)

Are we meant to draw some deeper meaning by pairing Elsa and Fred with Sylvia and Marcello? Is crazy love always abbreviated by reality, be it through daylight or mortality? Do Elsa and Sylvia stand for the wild feminine abandon, while Fred and Marcello are the reluctant, earthbound men who gape in awe? Can we ever really know each other? Elsa and Fred can't be bothered to grapple with these questions. They're too busy being yanked from emotional beat to emotional beat, enduring some head-scratching scenes meant solely to enable the film's foregone conclusion.

The Fellini parallel deserves a more thoughtful, graceful movie, perhaps one that doesn't deflate like a watery souffle when set against the ornate layer cake of "La Dolce Vita." "Elsa & Fred" feels choppy, hasty, dismissible and not stylistically substantial enough to bear the weight of its themes. It's the kind of movie schmaltz-lovers will enjoy, shed a tear over but by tomorrow forget what it was about, or that they even saw it. "Elsa & Fred" dissolves like cotton candy, making proper digestion impossible. The life it shows us is too sweet.

Elsa & Fred (108 minutes at Landmark's Bethesda Row) is rated PG for adult themes and language. In Spanish with subtitles.