Philip Roth’s 2001 novella The Dying Animal is a cruel anatomisation of sexual obsession. Nearing his 70s, Roth’s frequent protagonist David Kepesh endures a fraught romance with his ravishing young student Consuela, whose beauty torments him into jealous anguish. In the course of the book, Kepesh shifts heavily from insensitive priapism through obsession into passive, depressed contrition – but generally paints his own failings as a burden he shares with all men, and resists the analysis of their emotional roots. Love is doomed because, to men, sex is all that matters.

This film adaptation, scripted by Nicholas Meyer and directed by Isabel Coixet (The Secret Life of Words), takes a different, more feminist tack, emphasising what Kepesh (Sir Ben Kingsley) cannot see: the emotional void at the centre of his infatuation. His conviction that Consuela (Penélope Cruz) will leave him is the defence mechanism of a commitment-phobe (better to fantasise about being left than to accept the challenge of being worthy of love); erotic preoccupations are likewise an adolescent distraction from the realities of his feelings. His problem is not obsessive love, but lack of love; like a bad workman blaming his tools, he regards his personal inadequacy as a genetic inevitability. Thus the story’s twist, in which Consuela returns to Kepesh with a serious life lesson to deliver, becomes less of a grisly irony and more of a late emotional transition: had he seen her as a creature with feelings as well as beautiful breasts, a respectful relationship might have been possible all along.

With crisply beautiful cinematography by Jean-Claude Larrieu, and a set of interestingly nuanced performances by well-chosen actors, Elegy is an elegant, seductive and challenging modern romance. Especially satisfying is the work of Sir Ben Kingsley, who captures behind Kepesh’s twinkly arrogance the frailty of a man sustained only by intellectual vanity and sexual variety.