Elegy

David Kepesh is growing old. He's a professor of literature, a student of American hedonism, and an amateur musician and photographer. When he finds a student attractive, Consuela, a 24-year-old Cuban, he sets out to seduce her. Along the way, he swims in deeper feelings, maybe he's drowning. She presses him to sort out what he wants from her, and a relationship develops. They talk of traveling. He confides in his friend, George, a poet long-married, who advises David to grow up and grow old. She invites him to meet her family. His own son, from a long-ended marriage, confronts him. Is the elegy for lost relationships, lost possibilities, beauty and time passing, or failure of nerve?

In Manhattan, the middle-aged writer, art critic, professor and aspirant piano player and photographer David Kepesh questions that his age does not affect his sex drive. Despite his cultural knowledge, the intellectual David is a man that has grown old but never grown up, and he is unable to last a relationship, including one with his oncologist son, Kenneth Kepesh. The exceptions are his old poet friend and confident, George O'Hearn, and the independent businesswoman Carolyn, with whom he has an affair for more than twenty years. When he meets the elegant, educated and gorgeous Cuban student Consuela Castillo in his literature class, he feels a great sexual attraction towards her and seduces her in the end of the period. They have a love affair for one and half years, but David is always insecure, being at least thirty years older than the student. When Consuela forces David to come to her graduation party and meet her family and friends, he takes a decision that affects their relationship forever. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil