Earlier films have featured stand-out performances from Peter O'Toole and the Italian actor Toni Servillo and now next Wednesday in the American film Elegy Sir Ben Kingsley is absolutely remarkable in a role that could not be more different from his famed appearance in Gandhi.
Elegy is an adaptation of a novella by the revered author Philip Roth and it is directed by Isabel Coixet thus creating a useful balance.
It's useful because this is the story of a professor in his sixties who has an eye for younger women including students of his who have graduated.
The latest ex-student to catch his eye is played by Penélope Cruz who has rarely looked more beautiful and the film is compassionate but critical in its portrait of a man whose obsession for youth ultimately makes him a pathetic figure.
A great supporting cast offers Patricia Clarkson, Peter Sarsgaard and Dennis Hopper in pitch-perfect performances and by having a female director the risk of the professor's behaviour being excused too easily is avoided.
Instead we are given a real insight into such a person and Kingsley realises the character to perfection.