Very Cool!!!

An absolute waste of money

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

This is one of those jewels of filmdom that Hollywood will seldom or never produce --a shining venue for actors of "a certain age" (and not Clint Eastwood) in a romantic comedy replete with laughs, tears and profound yet light-handed treatments of human nature and national traits. The pace moves without interruption; it lags at no time, a tribute to a superb script and masterful editing. The scenes are remarkable for their realism. The acting is extraordinarily sensitive and on the mark. Watch the body language and facial expressions in funny/sad/ordinary situations. It's almost like being there, eavesdropping and peeping at this wonderful couple as their relationships bobs, weaves, dips and soars. The subtle ethnic jokes are there too ... the Telephone company retiree sporting one of the most ancient family names in Spain ... the Argentine widow (or not) displaying some of the too-clever-by-half sharpness many of her compatriots put to work to get by ... the play on letter of the apartments ("J" in Spanish as in "F" in English), etc., etc. A winner all around, worth seeing again and again. Do not miss this home run of a film.

I must say I'm very impressed with this movie. When I read it was about an old man that meets this old woman, I thought I wasn't gonna like it. However, many people recommended so I watched it. And it was good, VERY, VERY GOOD. It has a little bit of everything, is a movie where you'll laugh and cry, the actors that play "Elsa & Fred" are simply FLAWLESS. The story is well-developed. I highly recommend it, and I will certainly have in mind next time that a movie with an old couple as the main characters can be excellent, like "Elsa & Fred" is.Some of my favorite scenes of the movie is where Elsa is inside her car singing "Hoy puede ser un gran dia" ("Today can be a great day") by the amazing Joan Manuel Serrat. Here's the translation of the song:Today can be a great day, think of it that way, making the most of it or wasting it... it all depends on you. Give the day to the experience of a new start, and receive it like a party that you never want to end.Don't let your day fade, consume life completely. Today can be a great day, make it work.Today can be a great day where everything is about to be discovered. If you live it as the last one you are ever going to live. Take your instincts and let them breathe out in the sun. And don't restrict your pleasures, make them endless if you can.If the routine doesn't let you breathe say NO to mediocrity. Today can be a great day, give yourself an opportunity.Today can be a great day impossible to recover, an unique thing... don't let it escape. That everything around you is there just for you. Don't look from a window, get inside of it.Fight for what you want and don't get desperate if everything isn't okay. Today can be a great day... and tomorrow too.

I have not seen a movie in years which I have enjoyed more. I saw it yesterday in Puerto Rico where it has been showing for weeks. The theater was packed and I heard some people say that they had seen it 4 and 5 times. It is truly worth it. You will cry and laugh but you will enjoy it thoroughly. What a wonderful cast. China is delightful and so is Manuel Alexandre. I am 80 years old and of course I was completely touched by this wonderfully warm movie. I recommend it most highly to everyone. The movie did not have English subtitles and I do not know whether it has been distributed in the States. However, I am sure that English speaking audiences will enjoy it as much as Spanish speaking ones. I hope that everyone in the civilized world has an opportunity to see this film which speaks to the hearts of all humanity.

If summary treated to do, could to say that film "Elsa & Fred" counts history of two people that finds way to bear anguishes and sufferings of a whole life to hills for, in last stage of his lives, perhaps when they could think that already everything was defined, to be able to allow the luxury to enjoy in fullness of the adventure of the love. These few lines absolutely that define the argument of the film of Marcos director Carnevale - a Co-production Spanish-Argentinean, although do not need the truth, are very far from explaining or to draw a little at least what happens. In fact, the distance is infinite that separates that concise synthesis of which the film is in fact. The difference is as great as the one that separates a dense film, foreseeable and stereotyped of other than it surprises in each passage, that is let flow with harmony and overflows of freshness, philosophy and the good humor. The technical and narrative solidity of the film, the ability of Carnevale to be able to be present absenting itself, for example, when always locating the camera in the right point, without letting to him never take too much protagonism. The balance and intelligence whereupon the script compose the personages and raise the evolution of history, treating to avoid the temptation of the fall in the common places. The overwhelming work of the actors, the Spanish Manuel Alexandre and Uruguayan China Zorrilla (in of its better papers). Through these four fundamental factors, the film is allowed to rest in its external structure and to forget in this way her, generating the frame ideal so that in screen it arises what nothing has to do with the material, and everything with the cinema. Because Elsa and Fred, together, are pure chemistry and magic, and become partners of a dream that crosses the screen. They two single ones are able to defy any prejudiced spectator (who watches with suspicions that of a history of love between greater people) to than rises of their armchair and she retires of the cinema if he is able to become bored or to get annoyed although it is a minute. Perhaps the greater virtues of history that devised the producer Carnevale next to Lily Ann Martin and Marcela Guerty have to do with fierceness to approach a very repeated subject cinematographically, and with the capacity to please construct to turns in the rate and the freshness of the narration, without never losing of Vista the basic parameters of probability that do to the plot. The personage who Zorrilla incarnates skillfully is decisive so that the tape can take a way different from which perhaps could beforehand wait for-. Su Elsa it is pure energy, freedom, spontaneous, cleverness, joy to live. Their wrinkled body and a few pains are not sufficient to hide a contagious overflowed spirit of youth. Fred, however, has had routine a singsong life and. Load with himself the lost sadness of having not long ago its woman, than loved woman, loved more companion. When the chance crosses to the protagonists, because they are neighboring, Elsa is thrown upon Fred, looks for it, almost practically harasses it. It has decided to bet his cards to be able to pass it or with that quiet and honest man who so or falls to him. Each encounter, each exit, each dialogue between Elsa and Fred, does not have waste. The film is advancing and by all means, as it does, the conflicts and the dramatic load of history gain more space. Nevertheless, the luminous and fresh essence of the film stays until the end. In this it has much to do the coherence in the elections and decisions that the script for the resolution takes from the plot. The film does not have to make an effort to sweeten nor to diminish the end: simply, the closing is natural consequence of flowing previous. Elsa and Fred manage to show that the love between people of the third age is able to involve the passion, to the eroticism, the dreams. They do not need to deny its oldness to obtain it, much less to request last youth. Without falling in stereotypes, the film is maintained with solidity in the idea that never it is behind schedule for the love; as it maintains the motto that says the film, an appointment of the Spanish Pablo Picasso, "has been time to get to be young". Basically, the personages live and enjoy so much as they can of the love who can live. In this sense, the main merit of the film is the firmness with which the producer faces his boarding the treated subject. If by on all the things something Elsa and Fred obtain, that is to demonstrate and to make think that the love has own organization in the oldness: it is not an exclusive subject of the young people.