Evening

Plot synopsis:
The film alternates between two time periods, the 1950s and the present, in which a dying Ann Grant Lord (Vanessa Redgrave) reflects on her past. Her confusing comments about people she never mentioned before leave her daughters, reserved Constance (Natasha Richardson) and restless Nina (Toni Collette), wondering if their mother is delusional.
As a young woman in her early twenties, cabaret singer Ann (Claire Danes) arrives at the spacious Newport, Rhode Island, home of her best friend Lila Wittenborn (Mamie Gummer), who is on the verge of getting married to Karl Ross (Timothy Kiefer). Lila's brother (and Ann's college friend) Buddy (Hugh Dancy) introduces her to Harris Arden (Patrick Wilson), a young doctor and the son of a former family servant. Buddy tells Ann his sister always has adored Harris, and expresses his concern that she's marrying another man out of a sense of duty rather than love. Inebriated, Buddy passes out, and as Ann and Harris chat they find themselves bonding.
On Lila's wedding day, she confesses to Ann that she confronted Harris with her feelings for him and he rebuffed her, so she goes along with the ceremony as planned and marries Karl. At the reception, at Lila's request, Ann sings a song and is joined on stage by Harris. Afterwards Buddy, drunk again, confronts the two about their growing closeness. Then he unexpectedly kisses Harris. As Lila prepares to depart with her new husband, Ann offers to take the bride away with her, but Lila refuses and leaves for her honeymoon.
Buddy admits to Ann he's had a crush on Harris since his childhood, though he also claims not to be "that way" - he denies that this would be okay as Ann assures him. He then changes the subject, confessing he has loved Ann ever since their college days, offering as proof a note she once sent him he has kept in his pocket ever since. Ann is unconvinced.
By the sea the younger guests dance drunkenly and dive into the sea from a clifftop: Buddy joins in but fails to surface, prompting a panicked search. When Buddy reappears at the top of the cliff, Ann expresses her anger at the prank and berates Buddy for repressing his sexual orientation and building her up as his true love. She storms off and she and Harris slip off to his secret hideaway, where the two make love.
Buddy, in search of the couple, stumbles into the road and is hit by a car. His friends find him, but too late to save his life. The following morning, Ann and Harris, oblivious to what transpired the night before, jokingly consider sailing away, but at the Wittenborn house they hear the tragic news of Buddy's death.
In the present day, Lila (Meryl Streep) arrives at Ann's bedside to comfort her and reminisce. Ann recalls a day when she ran into Harris in the street in New York City. By then she had one daughter and was on the verge of moving to Los Angeles, and he was married with a son. He intimated he still loved her before the two exchanged cordial goodbyes.
As Lila leaves, she tells Nina about Harris and reassures her that her mother did not make any mistakes in her life. Nina sits with Ann, who encourages her daughter to have a happy life. Nina finally musters the courage to tell her boyfriend Luc she is pregnant with their child. An ecstatic Luc proudly announces the news to Constance and promises he always will be there for Nina. Their joy is interrupted by Ann's nurse, who urges the women to rush to their mother's bedside to bid her farewell.

Tags: romantic, flashback

Review:
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.
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.
Thankfully they got a top-notch cast....MerylStreep'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.
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.
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.
From newly crowned Claire Danes who gets better with each movie she makes to the old standards that will never pass our way again like Vanessa Redgrave, Natasha Richardson, Meryl Streep and Toni Collette.
For this viewer, seeing the film on a DVD in the quiet of the home, a very different reaction occurred.Ann Grant Lord (Vanessa Redgrave) is dying in her home by the ocean and her medication and memories allow her to share a man's name - 'Harris' - with her two grown daughters Nina (Toni Colette) and Constance (Natasha Richardson).
As her daughters sit at her bedside Ann relives a particular summer when she was a bridesmaid for her best friend Lila (Mamie Gummer) - a marriage both Ann (Claire Danes as the youthful Ann) and Lila's alcoholic brother Buddy (Hugh Dancy) objected to, feeling that Lila was simply marrying a man of her class instead of the boy she had loved - Harris Arden (Patrick Wilson), her housekeeper's son who had become a physician.
The older Lila (Meryl Streep) visits Ann at the end and the secrets are revealed: 'there are no such things as mistakes - life just goes on.' The film is a delicate mood piece and the script by Minot and Cunningham is rich in atmosphere and subtle life lessons.
The film is graced by the presence of not only Redgrave, Richardson (Redgrave's true daughter), Collette, Gummer (Streep's true daughter), Meryl Streep, Claire Danes, Eileen Atkins, Glenn Close, Hugh Dancy and Patrick Wilson, but also with an ensemble cast of brief but very solid performances.
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.
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.
And there was always a huge number of words that were annoying and depressing me next time I read.Only when I watched the film "Evening", I was able to formulate what I feel about cinema at all.Even though, this copy of filmmaking absolutely has no shortage of the stars of the 'first' magnitude, and some people most likely consider, that there are too many of them, but I could say that this movie is not a masterpiece and it won't be shown on every March 8.
Vanessa Redgrave is dying but before she goes she begins to tell her daughters the story of her life and of her secret love...This is one of those movies which has the look and expectations of being a great film simply because they have so many great actors and actresses in it so it seems to be about something other than the potboiler that it really is.
Not bad as such but with Redgrave, Toni Collette, Glenn Close, Meryl Streep, Clare Danes,Natasha Richardson,Eileen Atkins, Patrick Wilson,Hugh Darcy and others (all giving fine performances) you expect more than a weepy story thats a bit more than a harlequin romance.Wait for Cable..
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.
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.
"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.
Vannessa Redgrave (god of acting), Natasha Richardson (always reliable and ironically Redgrave's daughter in real life as well as the movie), Meryl Streep (need i say any more?), Mamie Gummer (a very good newcomer who is Streeps real daughter and plays Streep's younger version), Glenn Close (really needs an Oscar god dammit!), Eileen Aitkins (always creates interesting characters), Toni Collette (your terrible Muriel!), Claire Danes (terrific as the lead.
It's too bad all these factors compound each other because a stellar cast has been assembled, and except for a few key scenes, they are unfortunately presented like chess pieces on a postcard-pretty tableau.The time-spanning story concerns free spirited Ann Grant Lord at two points in her life, as a young woman in 1954 about to be the maid of honor at her best friend Lila Wittenborn's Newport society wedding and at her deathbed 45 years later with her two grown daughters tending to her.
Wiser casting choices prevail elsewhere with an underused Natasha Richardson, Redgrave's real-life daughter, playing the older Ann's sensible daughter Constance and with Mamie Gummer and her mother Meryl Streep as Lila then and now.
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.
Nina, having always felt inferior, cannot maintain a relationship.Stir all of these relationships into a span of fifty years, and you get an intriguing look at society, its values, and its effects upon the personalities and actions of the complex people involved.All of the acting in Evening is excellent, but there are some extraordinary performances and scenes - along with two unique family relationships - that make this film so very, very special.Claire Danes plays the 1950's Ann, and she does it in a style that clearly shows an intelligent woman of those times who is conflicted by what she is supposed to do as opposed to what she wants to do.
Collette is perfect for a part such as this, but I have never seen her give a bad or unbelievable performance no matter what part she plays.Mamie Gummer plays 1950's Lila and shows us a woman even more conflicted of her expected role in life than her good friend, Ann. She is very good.Meryl Streep - Gummer's mother - plays present day Lila.
What is there to say about Meryl Streep other than she always gives an insightful and rewarding performance.Director Lajos Koltai states in the DVD extras that he sought out Glenn Close to play the relatively small part of Lila's mother because he felt she was the only actress he could think of to play one scene in the film.
Just to review: Vanessa Redgrave, Meryl Streep, Claire Danes, Patrick Wilson, Hugh Dancy, Glenn Close, Toni Collette, Natasha Richardson and I still probably forgot someone.
In the earlier timeline, we begin with Ann (now played by Claire Danes) and good friend Buddy Wittenborn (Hugh Dancty) en route to attend the wedding of his sister Lila (Mamie Gummer, and if you think she resembles Meryl Streep, then yes, because she's her real life daughter), who through body language confesses to them both that she's having second thoughts about her impending marriage, because of her still nursing an old flame affection for hunky doctor Harris Arden (Patrick Wilson), the son of their family's caretaker.And as the story develops, we see how relationships turn, some for the better, though it may be fleeting, while others turn for the worse.
The sibling rivalry between daughters Toni Colette and Natasha Richardson looked stereotype although again the acting rose above the simplistic script.In my opinion these actors are all victim of a bad script and in some cases bad directing.Patrick Wilson in his role as Harris, is a cardboard version of a person.In the end ,in this story, life is a struggle that we find a neatly wrapped up solution for in the last ten minutes.In a children's book, maybe, but for a film with the appearance of quality and depth?
However, the story that takes place in the current time, where Vanessa Redgrave (as the older Ann) is dying and her two daughters (Toni Collette and Natasha Richardson) hang around her bedside, is not as involving.More troubling for my experience of the film - I was seriously distracted by the way most of these wonderful women looked.
It is tremendous to see such a brilliant cast in EVENING: "Mother" Streep and her very own talented daughter, Mamie Gummer; Vanessa Redgrave and her Natasha Richardson; and to see a group of talented young American actors rising to the forefront of their careers in Claire Danes and Patrick Wilson,as well as Britain's Hugh Dancy and Australia's Toni Collette; and finally, the magnificent Glenn Close, along with Barry Bostwick and Eileen Atkins, to round out a simply superb cast.In closing, EVENING at times, became a bit maudlin watching Vanessa go back and forth "into the light", but Ms. Streep made the day with her entrance and the final closure to the film.
The last thing I want to watch on screen is Tom Cruise leap off another tall building - I would much rather watch a thought provoking film of with legendary actresses Vanessa Redgrave, the lovely Claire Danes, Toni Collette, the late Natasha Richardson and Meryl Streep and Glenn Close fill the screen with their brilliance.
If you have a longing for an era gone by, when men were gentlemen and women were ladies, this film will take you on a trip to Newport, Rhode Island, home of the very wealthy on the East coast and through a story happening in the mind of Ann Grant in her last days, dreaming of that one evening that was life captivating and a story in real-time as her daughters Nina and Constance wait at their mother's home in her last days as she nears death upstairs in her bed and dreams of her youth and the lost love she had with Harris that weekend in Newport.
I suspect that, if so much male talent had been dissipated, we'd know more about it.Imagine a movie with Vanessa Redgrave and daughter Natasha Richardson, Meryl Streep and daughter Mamie Gummer, Glenn Close, Toni Colette, and Claire Danes.
What I especially appreciated was the performance of Vanessa Redgrave, one particular scene, the one when she hallucinates that the love of her life is somewhere in the background smiling at her, was the highlight of the entire movie.Other than that all the actors played really well and if the soundtrack wasn't so terribly melodramatic (pun intended) I would have probably graded the film with a 9..
Although I admit that i believe that it is rather a "ladies movie" (it is mostly about women, and is, perhaps, more interesting to women than to men).Well, the movie itself consists of two story lines: one is about an old woman, Ann (Vanessa Redgrave), who is dying, and her daughters (Natasha Richardson and Toni Collette).
The other storyline consists of Ann's recollections of one weekend, when Ann was a young woman (Claire Danes gives an excellent performance here) who came to her best friend's (Mamie Gummer) wedding, and the way it affected her life.The movie is mostly about memories and lost opportunities, and I think that the writers, the actors and the director made a great job.
EVENING (2007) * Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Vanessa Redgrave, Patrick Wilson, Hugh Dancy, Natasha Richardson, Mamie Gummer, Eileen Atkins, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Barry Bostwick.
A stellar cast, consisting of Vanessa Redgrave, Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Natasha Richardson, Glenn Close and Meryl Streep, is reason enough for watching "Evening," one of those high-toned, slightly stuffy, intergenerational family dramas that is all about lost loves, wasted lives and missed opportunities, this time among the champagne-sipping upper crust of Newport, Rhode island.Redgrave stars as Ann Grant, a terminally ill woman whose dementia is leading her to reveal secrets on her deathbed that have been locked away in her memory for years.
These scenes set in the present are intercut with those from the past, the 1950's in fact, when a young Ann (now played by Danes) fell in love with Harris (Patrick Wilson), the servant of her best friend, Lila (Mamie Gummer, who looks for all the world like a young Meryl Streep, who indeed steps in as Lila for the present scenes).