Elsa & Fred (2014)
Directed by Michael Radford
After his daughter persuades him to move into a new apartment, aged widower Fred strikes up a friendship with his eccentric 74-year-old neighbour Elsa, who convinces him it's never too late to keep enjoying life. Although he seemed resigned to a miserable bedridden existence, Fred embraces Elsa's youthful enthusiasm as she introduces him to the path of life and entertains him with outlandish stories about her past life. But when he discovers Elsa's terminally ill, Fred decides to accompany her on the trip of her dreams to the eternal city of Rome to help her fulfil a lifelong ambition.
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What critics compared Elsa & Fred to
While Fred is happy to read the obituaries, claiming he likes to catch up on his friends, top of Elsa’s bucket list is to dance in the same fountain in Rome as Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita.
But the film smothers the pair with cutesy touches (Elsa is obsessed with Fellini’s La Dolce Vita , especially the iconic scene in which Anita Ekberg frolics in the Trevi Fountain), many of which are lifted directly from the original but register as even cringier in this Anglo version.
When first we see her, she’s in bed watching La Dolce Vita and daydreaming she’s in a world created by Federico Fellini.
The most contrived plot element centers around Elsa's obsession with Fellini's La Dolce Vita.
Michael Radford's romantic comedy Elsa & Fred is a remake of Marcos Carnevale's Spanish-language film of the same name, and it also retains the original's obsession with La Dolce Vita.
Elsa never stops moving or talking, most often about her favorite fantasy, a famous scene in Frederico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita.”
But we’re on the same wave length as Fred, the only thing we know for certain about Elsa is that she’s obsessed with Fellini’s La Dolce Vita , and wants for nothing more than to recreate Anita Ekberg’s famed feline assisted dip into the Trevi Fountain (which felt old back in 2003 when we had to watch Lindsay Duncan do the same thing in Under the Tuscan Sun ).