You can see the urgent need for a title change in transferring Philip Roth's sorrowful little novella from page to screen: "The Dying Animal" would be equivalent to macing or tasering people away from the box office.

"Elegy" is much prettier. Never mind that it conveys nothing about substance, only form: a hymn of praise and lamentation for a lost loved one; a pensive dirge in a melancholy tone.

The Roth character singing it here is David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley), the most erudite and assured of "cultural critics": 62-year-old Columbia professor, star lecturer, NPR book-show host, darling of Charlie Rose, champion of the sexual revolution in public and private alike. David is a serial seducer of his most alluring female students, with a fresh annual supply to choose from.

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'Elegy'

3 stars = Good
Ratings explained

• Starring: Ben Kingsley, Penelope Cruz, Patricia Clarkson.
• Rating: R for sexuality, nudity and language.
• Web site: samuelgoldwynfilms.com.

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Oh, he's got a few problems. He was a lousy absent father, and his son (Peter Sarsgaard) hates him. He's worried about his age, mortality and The Meaning of Life. But everything's pretty much under control until soignee Consuela (Penelope Cruz), an immensely alluring daughter of wealthy Cuban exiles, enters his life to awaken the sexual possessiveness he never wanted or thought he had.

Consuela's singular poise and beauty discombobulate David, as well as his cozy, decades-old relationship with Carolyn (Patricia Clarkson). All the while, he keeps getting -- and trying to ignore -- the advice of his roguish best bud George (Dennis Hopper) to cut it off.

Spanish director Isabel Coixet ("My Life Without Me") has a slow, steady, contemplative style whose feminine perspective leavens Roth's male-chauvinist-piggie world. Nicholas Meyer's too-faithful screenplay turns a 150-page story into a 113-minute film, capturing the intensity but not the rascalish wit.

Coixet and Kingsley both pay lavish attention to Cruz's bare chest, and who can blame them? But we buy her body more than her character, which is a little too bloodless for the intended erotic impact. Kingsley likewise plays it bland. You don't believe for a moment that he's both a sensitive photographer and pianist on the side, though the Erik Satie "Gnossiennes" music makes for a gorgeous soundtrack.

Biggest problem with all the requisite touching and devouring is the generational disparity of those love scenes: How many 20- or 30-somethings really fall in love with 60-somethings (if money's not involved) longer than it takes for the novelty and utility of the elder's world-knowledge to wear off? His jealousy and fear of commitment -- or hers -- will ruin everything, and she'll remember him as just "the old guy that gave her some culture along the way."

Roth provides a melodramatic death-switch twist to this meditation on love, lust and life, but for all its sexual essence, it's more baleful than sexy -- "for mature audiences" in a painfully euphemistic sense, viz., people "of a certain age" (Roth's, Kingsley's, mine), confronting the grimly eternal issue of human impermanence.

The publicist's famous telegram to the famous actor: "How old Cary Grant?"

The actor's famous reply: "Old Cary Grant fine, how you?"

Roth and Coixet are aiming for a classic pastoral elegy along the lines of Thomas Gray or Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young." What they get is a worthy attempt, but finally reminiscent of Erich Segal's "Love Story."

Opening today but not screened for critics are: "College," a raunchy comedy in which three high school seniors pay a college visit to a local campus; "Babylon A.D.," a sci-fi thriller starring Vin Diesel; and "Disaster Movie," another parody from the creators of "Scary Movie" and "Epic Movie."