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Evening tells a story worth hearing but unfortunately it gets lost along the way. There's too much focus on the present - not just Vanessa Redgrave's performance as the older Ann but mostly the subplot regarding her children. It's necessary to come to the present at times so that we can see how what has happened in the past has affected her and how she chooses to remember but the rest of it just weighs the film down without complementing it as it was meant to. The performances in the present scenes also lack the same elegance as those that take place in the past. Collette is a great actress but she and her boyfriend's actor both give average performances that just get in the way. The story that takes place in the past dealing with love, identity, and choice all within a few days time is where the film truly shines. Danes, of course, gives a great performance but Dancy is the one who steals the spotlight with what I feel should've garnered him a nomination for supporting actor at the Academy awards. The story is eloquent, melancholy, and can be felt as well as understood from deeper thought. If it weren't so muddled by what takes place in the present then it could've been a great film but as it stands with the way it is I can only call it good but not great. Another point of interest is the film's score which is just absolutely beautiful. So if you want to see a good movie then Evening is for you - just don't expect every piece to be wondrous as the wonder occurs in the past and is watered down by the present. That's just how I felt about it.

Halfway through Lajos Koltai's "Evening," a woman on her deathbed asks a figure appearing in her hallucination: "Can you tell me where my life went?" The line could be embarrassingly theatrical, but the woman speaking it is Vanessa Redgrave, delivering it with utter simplicity, and the question tears your heart out.

Time and again, the film based on Susan Minot's novel skirts sentimentality and ordinariness, it holds attention, offers admirable performances, and engenders emotional involvement as few recent movies have. With only six months of the year gone, there are now two memorable, meaningful, worthwhile films in theaters, the other, of course, being Sara Polley's "Away from Her." Hollywood might have turned "Evening" into a slick celebrity vehicle with its two pairs of real-life mothers and daughters - Vanessa Redgrave and Natasha Richardson, and Meryl Streep and Mamie Gummer. Richardson is Redgrave's daughter in the film (with a sister played by Tony Collette), and Gummer plays Streep's younger self, while Redgrave's youthful incarnation is Claire Danes.

Add Glenn Close, Eileen Atkins, Hugh Dancy, Patrick Wilson, and a large cast - yes, it could have turned into a multiple star platform. Instead, Koltai - the brilliant Hungarian cinematographer of "Mephisto," and director of "Fateless" - created a subtle ensemble work with a "Continental feel," the story taking place in a high-society Newport environment, in the days leading up to a wedding that is fraught with trouble.

Missed connections, wrong choices, and dutiful compliance with social and family pressures present quite a soap opera, but the quality of the writing, Koltai's direction, and selfless acting raise "Evening" way above that level, into the the rarified air of English, French (and a few American) family sagas from a century before its contemporary setting.

Complex relationships between mothers and daughters, between friends and lovers, with the addition of a difficult triangle all come across clearly, understandably, captivatingly. Individual tunes are woven into a symphony.

And yet, with the all the foregoing emphasis on ensemble and selfless performances, the stars of "Evening" still shine through, Redgrave, Richardson, Gummer (an exciting new discovery, looking vaguely like her mother, but a very different actress), Danes carrying most of the load - until Streep shows up in the final moments and, of course, steals the show. Dancy and Wilson are well worth the price of admission too.

As with "Away from Her," "Evening" stays with you at length, inviting a re-thinking its story and characters, and re-experiencing the emotions it raises. At two hours, the film runs a bit long, but the way it stays with you thereafter is welcome among the many movies that go cold long before your popcorn.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: "It might have been!" John Greenleaf Whittier

Evening is dominated by regret, saturated so completely I regret having seen the film. Well, not quite, but rarely has a film had such an accomplished cast and high-class writing pedigree and disappointed me so thoroughly. The regret theme is hammered home so superficially I was driven to try to remember lines from The Great Gatsby to mitigate my growing anger at being treated by the filmmakers as if I could not endure subtlety or ambivalence.

In other words, I got it from the first scene where Vanessa Redgrave looks out over her Newport memory at her young self (Claire Danes) and begins what have to be the easiest lines she's ever had playing an aging romantic: "Why didn't I marry Harris?" The variations on this theme in the movie are legion, even when it's not the young doctor, played by Patrick Wilson, whom her friend, Lila (Mamie Gummer—looking very much like her aunt, Meryl Streep), also regrets not marrying.

One of my major problems is that it's never clear why these substantial women spent so much emotional coin on a character we never get to know, except for his Paul Newmanish good looks. But like the rest of the regret-laden characters, this film spends no dramatic coin on depth—all is skating on the surface, letting us do the sub-textual work rather than the dialogue. In the coda, Old Lila (Streep) makes an attempt at character deconstruction by saying about women, "We are mysterious creatures." Give me a break; could I have a bit more than platitude?

A regrettable life is Buddy's (Hugh Dancy), Lila's drunken, poetic brother, who tries to prevent Lila from marrying the wrong man (not Buddy), whom Buddy loves also, but then this gay sub-theme is never explored beyond a drunken kiss. Nothing in this film is explored except maybe its shameless borrowing from Gatsby without a modicum of understanding that his loss was not just of a woman but of a class struggle, a dying age, and self worth. For Ann, it's just Harris.

The cars are shiny period antiques, the house is beyond the reach of anyone in the audience, and the insights into smart women facing loss are none. Thank goodness for the arrival of evening, when the real stars are the lights in the firmament, not the rich wailing for their lost loves.

At least three writers (Washington Post, TimeOut New York, The New Yorker) have said this new movie would have worked better if made into a full-on melodrama by Douglas Sirk. This intermittent account of the death by cancer of an elderly lady named Ann Grant (Vanessa Redgrave), enlivened by lengthy and elaborate flashbacks to her medication-enriched memories of the early Fifties Newport wedding day of her upper class college friend Lila Wittenborn (Mamie Gummer; and Mamie's mother, Meryl Streep) is glamorized to the point of extinction by its cinematographer-director Lajos Koltai. (That Koltai should have gone from the spare, powerful Holocaust drama 'Fateless' to this confection is pretty tragic.) You'll never see such nice new England summer beach houses, so many scenes full of well-dressed people, or so many shiny late Forties convertibles with the tops down. But the scenes, which ought to have you weeping uncontrollably, just make you look at your watch and wonder where the payoff is, in the Fifties or in that house where Ann Grant is dying while her two squabbling and unlikely daughters, the proper Connie (Natasha Richardson) and the confused but honest Nina (Toni Colette), hang around downstairs.

The cast is so heavy-laden with divas (besides those mentioned, there are Clare Danes as the young Ann—an imperfect match; Glenn Close as Lila's stylish, patrician mamá; and Eileen Atkins as the night nurse) it renders the movie's conventional scenes unimportant and sinks its gossamer profundities. "At the end, so much of it turns out not to matter," Streep tells Colette, and us; "There is no such thing as a mistake." And then: "We are mysterious creatures, aren't we?" Is it enough reward for ten dollars, overpriced popcorn, and a wait of two hours to come up with nothing but that? True, though: much of the movie turns out not to matter—though there may well be such a thing as a mistake—and it's called 'Evening.' At the end it all adds up to the psychobabble truism that everybody did the best they could at the time. Which maybe wasn't very good; but the details are missing.

Ann comes in and out of consciousness muttering the name of Harris (Patrick Wilson), whom "everybody loved" but Nina and Connie have never heard of. And so the point of the story is . . .what became of Harris? No, not really. Nor is it what becomes of Nina and Connie, because they remain unformed or undefined; not Ann, because we learn little of what she did with her life, except that she had two girls and a couple of husbands she didn't love as much as Harris and gave up her career as a cabaret singer. Not what happened to Lila, who wanted to marry Harris but got hitched to somebody else (mainly no doubt because Harris was the housekeeper's son—though in the swirl of the glamour and the blur of the alternating time schemes these social distinction aren't well delineated). Lila just comes back at the end to cuddle with Ann in a Chanel-esquire suit and utter those little profundities. There are some embarrassing tricks with fake fireflies and moths that Vanessa has to take part in and Eileen Atkins has to dress up like a fairy godmother. As Rex Reed says, "it's amazing how good everyone looks in white linen." But still.

Of course, for acting fans there is bound to be material to enjoy here. Though they overwhelm the movie, it's fun just to see these people on the screen. Vanessa Redgrave is great, getting the most from her lines without seeming hammy. When Meryl Streep climbs into her deathbed with her, it's some kind of ultimate Hollywood Kodak moment. Toni Colette, who can be irritating and even ghoulish, is appealing as the neurotic but ever hopeful Nina. Cunningham's very post-Sirk beautiful loser character Buddy, the doomed, passionate, and blooming drunkard, a character central to the flashback action though barely mentioned in Susan Minot's book, gives the sexy and riveting Hugh Dancy (somebody we're surely going to see a lot more of) a chance to chew up the rug—which suggests Cunningham would really have some fun and give us something worth watching if he let go and just winged it without his own or anybody else's novel to have to slice and dice. People think Michael Cunningham is so good for movies (though some of us have yet to be convinced). Well then, why doesn't he do one, instead of redoing other things for other people to direct?. He adapted his own novel 'A Home at the End of the World;' David Hare adapted his 'The Hours;' this time he has adapted Susan Minot's novel. (Rumor has it she's not that happy with the result. Why should she be?) Isn't it time for Cunningham to write an original screenplay? Then we can see what he can do, and it better be good. And it better not be like this. Despite Todd Haynes' effort in 'Far from Heaven,' this is not an age in which the Sirkian sensibility makes sense. 'Evening' is a celebration of regret. In the era of George W. Bush that no longer seems like a viable emotion.

Saw this Saturday night at the Provincetown Film Festival, and it's a stick-to-your-bones movie -- it's really stayed with me. Adapted very smartly from what is probably an excellent novel, it's a back-and-forth-in-time drama with fully rounded characters, thoughtful rumination on life choices, and, I'm not exaggerating. one of the greatest casts ever assembled in 100+ years of movie-making. Wonderful work from everyone, led by a luminous Vanessa Redgrave as a dying, deluded Newport matron, and Claire Danes as her much younger self. Meryl Streep's daughter Mamie Gummer is, like Mama, the real deal; Patrick Wilson looks like Paul Newman circa 1958 and doesn't overplay the charm; and what a pleasure to see such excellent stage actors as Barry Bostwick and Eileen Atkins contributing sharp, detailed cameos. Hugh Dancy, also from the stage, doesn't bring much edge to the somewhat clichéd role of an unhappy rich wastrel, and the family issues are resolved perhaps more neatly than real life would allow. But it's a deliberately paced, visually gorgeous meditation on real life issues, and you can cry at it and not feel like you're being recklessly manipulated. Also, what a sumptuous parade of 1940s/50s automobiles.

"Evening" features some of the biggest female stars in the biz in parts both large and minor (really cameos): Vanessa Redgrave, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Claire Danes, the late Natasha Richardson, Toni Colette, Mamie Gummer. It's hard to fit all of those big screen personae into one movie without making the audience feel overwhelmed. Not to mention handsome male stars like Hugh Dancy, Patrick Wilson and Barry Bostwick. Redgrave plays Ann Lord, an older woman on her deathbed in a beautiful, historic New England house. While her daughters (Richardson, her real-life daughter, and Colette) hover over her and bicker, they notice she has drifted into reverie and memories of her distant past. Much of the film's actual plot focuses on one fateful weekend 40+ years earlier, when Ann, appealingly portrayed as a willowy, spirited, aspiring nightclub singer by Danes, serves as maid of honor to her best friend, the daughter of a wealthy, uptight Newport family. The wedding weekend brings Ann unexpected passion, love, secrets revealed and tragedy, and her life subsequently takes various turns that she comes to regret. Based on the novel by Susan Minot (which was apparently quite different), "Evening" doesn't quite hit the right notes with its screenplay, which seems disjointed. The general message is that we all make choices in our lives based on what may seem right at the time, and then you must live with them. Unexpected events may make us change course or embrace different dreams from the ones we always thought were in our stars. "Evening" is stylishly filmed and features some good performances, especially Danes, who also sings very well, and Wilson, who is portrayed as the local hunk atop everyone's wish list and somehow manages not to disappoint. It's worth watching on a quiet weeknight. I think "Evening" would appeal most to a more mature audience who understands the pang of regret and loss, and the need to let things go.

I caught Evening in the cinema with a lady friend. Evening is a chick flick with no apologies for being such, but I can say with some relief that it's not so infused with estrogen that it's painful for a red-blooded male to watch. Except for a single instance at the very end of the movie, I watched with interest and did not have to turn away or roll my eyes at any self-indulgent melodrama. Ladies, for their part, will absolutely love this movie.

Ann Lord is elderly, bed-ridden and spending her last few days on Earth as comfortably as possible in her own home with her two grown daughters at her side. Discomfited by the memories of her past, Ann suddenly calls out a man's name her daughters have never heard before: Harris. While both of her daughters silently contemplate the significance of their mother's strong urge to recall and redress her ill-fated affair with this mysterious man at this of all times, Ann lapses back in her head to the fateful day she met Harris - and in doing so, lost the youthful optimism for the future that we all inevitably part ways with.

Both Ann and her two daughters - one married with children, one a serial "commitophobe" - struggle with the central question of whether true love really exists, and perhaps more importantly, if true love can endure the test of time. Are we all one day fated to realize that love never lasts forever? Will we all realize that settling for the imperfect is the only realistic outcome? The subtle fact that the aged Ann is still wrestling with an answer to these questions on her deathbed is not lost on her two daughters.

The cinematography for Evening is interesting - most of the film is spent in Ann's mind as she recalls the past, and for that reason I think the film was shot as if it was all deliberately overexposed, to give everyone an ethereal glow (and thus make it very obvious that all of this is not real, but occurred in the past). Claire Danes is beautiful (appearing to be really, really tall, though just 5' 5" in reality), and is absolutely captivating in one climactic scene where her singing talents are finally put to the test.

You can't really talk trash about the cast, which leads off with Claire Danes and doesn't let up from there: Vanessa Redgrave, Patrick Wilson, Meryl Streep and Glenn Close fill out the other major and minor roles in the film.

I can't really say anything negative about this film at all, though Hugh Dancy's struggle to have his character emerge from utter one-dimensionality is in the end a total loss. Playing the spoiled, lovable drunk offspring of the obscenely rich who puts up a front of great bravado but is secretly scared stiff of never amounting to anything probably doesn't offer much in the way of character exploration - he had his orders and stuck to them.

In the end, gentlemen, your lady friend will most certainly weep, and while you'll likely not feel nearly as affected, the evening will definitely not be a waste for the time spent watching Evening. Catch it in theatres or grab it as a rental to trade off for points for when you want to be accompanied to a viewing of Die Hard 4 or the upcoming Rambo flick. It'll be your little secret that this viewing didn't really cost you much at all.

I really wanted to like this, but it never really took off. There wasn't enough substance to explain why the two characters had this strong-I'll-never-forget-you connection. They just met and then were immediately in love (yes, I've heard of love at first sight, but they seemed to be saying it was more than that but never really explained it). Then the end of the movie just fizzled and didn't explain what happened between them.

This movie did have moments. The scenes with the older woman and her daughters were nice, but this movie never lived up to what it felt like it could be.

If you like the kind of movie where every scene between two females ends with one of them brushing a lock of hair off the other's face, then this is for you. Otherwise beware. I found it painful, almost embarrassing to watch. One false note after another. What could possibly make every single member of this AMAZING, talented cast look so awkward and unmotivated in every scene? Why does all the storm & drung & agnst that this movie contains seem so undeserved and uncalled for? Maybe because the director is more experienced as a cinematographer? I can't recall another movie that contains so many cringe-worthy moments. And it's not really the performances, because there are some wonderfully acted moments. There's just something inappropriate about all the turgid emotion and drama. And as much as I like Claire Danes, she is no singer. I remember seeing this movie panned everywhere when it first came out, but when I noticed it on demand on TV and saw the cast, I thought it couldn't possibly be that bad. But it really was!

Sisters Constance (Natasha Richardson) and Nina (Toni Collette) are watching over their dying mother Ann Grant Lord (Vanessa Redgrave). When she starts blurting out names in her sleep, the girls wonder if she is slipping into dementia. Some fifty years earlier, young Ann (Claire Danes) is a singer in New York. She arrives at Newport, Rhode Island, to attend her rich friend Lila Wittenborn (Mamie Gummer)'s wedding. Lila's brother Buddy (Hugh Dancy) introduces her to Harris Arden (Patrick Wilson), the son of a former servant. Everybody lusts for Harris.

This is some cast. There are a lot of great actors. There may be too many great actors. It's a lot to keep track. Quite frankly, I wasn't always sure about every younger self's relationships and backstories. It's based on a book and the movie is probably trying adhere to the story. There are big compelling moments and I do like the mother daughter relationships. The other parts are sometimes going too slowly. There are moments when I want Claire Dane to not be the nice innocent. That's why blowing up at Buddy felt great. There are parts I like and some I don't. I am surprised with Dane's singing.

"We are mysterious creatures, aren't we? And in the end, so much of it doesn't even matter." So says Meryl Streep in Evening, easily one of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking movies I've ever seen. That doesn't mean it's the best... but it does mean it's good.

It's the story of Ann Grant, a dying old woman who continues to mutter random sayings that her confused and stressed daughters can't make anything of. But in Ann's mind, she is remembering back to the evening that defined her years and years ago. Meanwhile, her daughters must learn the lesson that their mother never did before it's too late.

The acting is all fantastic, but really how could you go wrong with this cast. Toni Collette does a wonderful job as the confused daughter of Ann who has to watch her mother die before her eyes... while something equally dramatic is taking place inside her. Vanessa Redgrave, Meryl Streep and Eileen Atkins are all wonderful, as usual. The only real disappointment of this film was the small size of Glenn Close's role. She easily has the smallest role in the film, a tragedy since she is one of the greatest actresses alive. However, she still has one of the most affecting scenes in the film, a tribute to her amazing ability. Natasha Richardson is also likable, as always.

The best acting in the film, though, easily goes to up-and-coming star Hugh Dancy. He was phenomenal and every second he was on screen was brilliance. Mr. Dancy portrayed the angst and emotion of his character (the best character in the movie) unlike anything I've ever seen before. He out-acted all of the amazing women surrounding him, and that is truly a feat. I'm rooting for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for him for this role.

In the end, Evening is about life and the way we choose to live it. The film's cleverness is derived from the way it defies all of our expectations. The characters are not at all who they seem to be at first glance, and by the end you've realized quite a few things about both them and yourself. The film is rather slow in some parts, and that is a downside. However, it never distorts the message, which is clear: Live your life. Don't spend your life worrying and stressing- just go with it. It's a timely message, indeed. 7/10 stars!

Jay Addison

Movies dealing with death in flashback are becoming a genre unto themselves, and one might expect an effort involving powerhouse names such as Meryl Streep, Vanessa Redgrave, and Glenn Close would produce a gold standard for the class. But "Evening" is a success only in part, weighed down too heavily by its own maudlin introspections and an unwieldy confluence of current-day and flashback moments. The result is an uneven and unsatisfying mix that, worst of all, runs about 30 minutes longer than necessary.

"Evening," to be sure, is a wonderfully photographed effort, but the photography cannot overcome a fractious screenplay that can't decide if it wants to tell a retrospective tale about an ending life, or an introspective tale about the impact that life had on her children. The result is that neither tale is told particularly well. As the story edges ever more tediously to its end, we find that Glenn Close is almost entirely wasted, that Meryl Streep has only one meaningful scene that is so awkwardly directed and - again - tediously executed that the viewer is left begging for a timely resolution that, in all honesty, never really comes.

"Evening" is a work that could have lived the potential held by its cast if its story had held the same potential. As it ends, it is only another average entry in an expanding genre.

-intrepid6

Since starting to read the book this movie is based on, I'm having mixed feelings about the filmed result. I learned some time ago to see the movie adaptation of a book before I read the book, because I found that if I read the book first I was inevitably disappointed in the film. This would undoubtedly have been true here, whereas in the case of Atonement, which is probably the best filmed adaptation of a book I've ever seen, it would probably not have mattered.

I'm trying to figure out what the cause is, and I suspect that I have to point my finger squarely at Michael Cunningham. Much as I respect him for The Hours (which I have not read but which I saw and was awed by) I cannot escape the feeling that he not so much adapted Susan Minton's book as he did take a few of the characters and the basic premise and write his own movie out of it.

It's not that I dislike the movie. I actually love the movie, which is why, since I started reading the novel, I'm feeling disturbed about the whole thing. I feel disloyal to Ms. Minton for enjoying the movie which was so thooughly a departure from her work. Reading it, I can understand why she had such a struggle adapting it. Unlike what one reviewer of the movie said, it's not so much that some novels don't deserve to be a movie; it's more like some books just can't make the transition. Ms. Minton's novel operates on a level so personal and intimate to her central character, so internally, that it seems impossible to me to place it in a physical realm. Even though a lot of the book is memory of real events, it is memory, and so fragmented and ethereal as to be, I feel, not filmable. I think that Ms. Minton's work is a real work of literature, but cannot make the transition to film, which in no way detracts from its value.

I cannot yet report that Evening, the film, does not represent Evening, the novel, in any more than the most superficial way, since I'm only halfway through, but the original would have to make a tremendous leap to resemble the film that follows at this point. I guess I'm writing this because I feel that if you're going to adapt a novel, adapt it, but don't make it something else that it's not. I'm not sure if Michael Cunningham has done anything wholly original, but from what I can see so far the things he has done are all based on someone else's work. We would not have The Hours if Virginia Woolf had not written Mrs. Dalloway, and we would not have Evening, in its distressed form, if Susan Minton had not had so much trouble doing what probably should not have been attempted in the first place. But it's too much to say that it would be better if Ms. Minton had left well enough alone, because Evening, the film, is a satisfactory and beautiful work of its own.

Thus my confusion, mixed feelings, sense of disloyalty, and ultimate conclusion that, in this case, the novel cannot be the film and vice versa, and my eventual gratitude to both writers for doing what they did, so that we have both works as they are.

This is not a profound movie; most of the plot aspects are pretty predictable and "tried and true" but it was well-acted and made some interesting points about what we might regret (our "mistakes" as the movie calls them) as we look back over our lives. I had not read the book, so didn't know much other than it was the story of a dying woman who has strong memories from long ago that she hasn't really shared with anyone. Thankfully they got a top-notch cast....Meryl

Streep's daughter, Mamie Gummer, plays the young Lila, and then Meryl shows up at the end of the film as the old Lila...in addition to an amazing resemblance (duh!) the younger actress did a great job (perhaps not quite up to her mom's caliber, but who is?) All others in this film were fine, although I wish there had been more of Glen Close and thought the Buddy character was alittle too dramatic.

This is more of a girls' movie than for the guys, but a good one to see with your mom, or your daughter, and maybe start some dialog going. How hard it is to really know a parent as a "person"!

Greetings again from the darkness. In the mode of "Beaches" and "Ghost", though definitely a step up in depth and class from either of those pure chick flicks. Sure this one is filled with women, but the enchanting story is truly about living one's life to the fullest and recognizing that regrets or "mistakes" are really not that at all.

Vanessa Redgrave plays Ann on her death bed and Claire Danes is the twenty-something Ann in flashbacks. Redgrave's real life daughter Natasha Richardson plays one of her daughters along with Toni Collette. Meryl Streep plays Ann's lifelong friend Lila and Streep's real life daughter Mamie Gummer plays bride to be young Lila in the flashbacks. If that isn't enough women for you, a truly frightening looking Glenn Close plays young Lila's well-bred mother and Eileen Atkins is terrific as the night nurse, who doubles up as Redgrave's personal angel.

OK, there really are a couple of guys in the film. Patrick Wilson ("Little Children") plays Harris, the doctor whom both Lila and Ann carry a lifelong torch for. Wilson needs to be careful or his career will be defined as the "other man". In a tremendous performance, up and comer Hugh Dancy plays Buddy, Lila's brother who pines for Ann through the bottom of a bottle.

Redgrave is magnificent in her role and the scenes with she and Streep in bed are truly moving. In a film with nice performances, Claire Danes again steals the spotlight. She is absolutely amazing. Two scenes really stand out for her. Seeing her come alive after singing at the wedding as she rambles on about her dreams is mesmerizing. At the opposite end of emotions, when she lights into Buddy at the cliff, we can really feel her pent up frustrations. Happy and Mad done very well.

This one will be classified as a chick flick, but it is much more. A well written story, beautifully filmed by first time director and long time cinematographer Lajos Koltai, and incredibly well acted throughout. This is quality film-making.