Evening

Synopsis: The story of a dying woman (Vanessa Redgrave) who relives a part of her life through memory as she drifts in and out of consciousness, with her two adult daughters, Constance (Natasha Richardson) and Nina (Toni Collette) by her side.

Directed by Budapest-born Lajos Koltai, an Academy Award-nominated cinematographer, Evening opens with a beautifully-composed dream sequence that gracefully introduces us to the story that we are about to witness – the love some 45 years earlier of a young woman, Ann Grant (played by Claire Danes), an aspiring torch singer, who is now bedridden and dying in her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, attended by her two daughters, Nina (Toni Collette) and Constance (Natasha Richardson).

Based on the novel by Susan Minot, who also adapted it for the screen with Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Michael Cunningham, Evening is poignant story of fleeting happiness, lost love, missed opportunities and mistakes which is directed with a deft touch by Koltai and performed by a top drawer cast that includes two real life mother daughter pairings: Mamie Gummer and Meryl Streep and Natasha Richardson and Vanessa Redgrave (although somewhat oddly, Gummer and Streep play younger and older versions of the same character whilst Richardson and Redgrave play mother and daughter) Also appearing is Glen Close.

The film switches back and forth between 1954 and 1998 as we gradually learn the meanings of Ann’s apparent ramblings whilst, as is the wont with such stories, downstairs Nina and Connie sort out some issues to do with the different paths in life that they have chose. The bulk of the film however is given over to Ann’s brief and tragedy-marred affair with a young doctor, Harris Arden (Patrick Wilson). Whilst Minot has crafted a finely-turned and moving story of star-crossed love, carrying the main focus of attention Danes is marvellous in conveying the emotional life of the younger Ann. Redgrave, in a less demanding role is effective as the dying woman although there is arguably not enough continuity between the two versions of the character. We get very little sense of the younger Ann in Redgrave's performance although the actress can hardly be blamed for this

Evening was widely criticized at the time of its release for being variously boring (who wants to watch an old lady dying?) and literary pretentious and certainly with its nods to Fitzgerald and Hemingway it adheres to the American tradition of wistful fiction as practiced by John Irving for example (tonally the film recalls Lasse Hallström's adaptation of Irving's Cider House Rules, 1999) but there’s depth enough here to make the film worthwhile.

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