not for one moment in the entire run of this film do i believe that cruz and kingsley character have any attraction to each other . a great deal of this start in the fact that and a one friend of mine put it and kingsley have all the sex appeal of a pickle . cruz put in a rather languid performance which be strong than most of her act due to the fact she be work with a spanish ( specifically and catalan ) director . but she fall flat on the screen anytime she there . she a very pretty woman and but a an actress and she consistently sub par . the only redeeming scene of the film be with dennis hopper and kingsley where cruz isn not present . these two old actor have a wonderful charisma on the screen and i would posit that it be one of hopper best performance of his career . it just go to show that coixet can indeed get great performance out of actor as long a theyre not penelope cruz . it be a tricky story to adapt and in general the plot be slow and meander . the film fail in the end in that it present character that 99 . 9 % of u can not relate to and doesn not ever really make u care what happen to them in the end . undoubtedly this film will be well receive in nyc where these type of film seem to ply well to a sympathetic audience and but for those of u outside the big apple and it just short of be an extremely painful film to watch . i need to add that i first saw this in madrid when it open in spain . there may have be some edits to the film upon u release that make it more tolerable and although i doubt how they would have be achieve .