text: I knew that 'Evening' was a girlie film, so I was expecting to be bored. A wicked tease on IMDb had said that it was a 'chick flick' but that your companion would survive.<br /><br />Survive? Yes. I am still here, but when the two of us came out we were amazed to find that it had only lasted two hours - it seemed a much longer evening than that! I suppose that, for Yanks, it is supposed to be elevating or fascinating because it is about rich people living on the beach - well, next to the beach, in a house with a wide verandah and a lawn but no apparent lawnmower. If that sort of thing impresses you it might seem quite a short film.<br /><br />There's a Monty Python film about a Knight who just won't die. He ends up a wriggling (why do Yanks add an third syllable to this word I wonder) torso in the road still shouting threats at his nemesis. This film is also about a sort of living dead. Vanessa Redgrave (inappropriate name for the grave dodger shown here) goes on and on dying whilst having inappropriate guilt. She's not worried about having been a wide-eyed, breathless bimbo, but imagines herself a murderess.<br /><br />Obviously, being a girlie film, there's a chap who is supposed to be the Mr Darcy/Heathcliff character. I'm not a woofter, so I can't claim to be a good judge of such things, but the tedious wimp who is wheeled out for this role seems only to have the title of servant in his favour. He's a bloodless cypher.<br /><br />As you might gather, the main characters aren't much cop, but the minor ones manage, amazingly to be much worse. There's a fellow whose only job is to react to the news that his girlfriend is preggers. Fair enough, but it isn't the role of Hamlet - why ham it up so badly? Forgetting that it was a girlie film, I thought he was going to be thrown out because any decent girl-friend would have told him that face-fungus didn't flatter him, but then I realised that she must have encouraged him to grow a 'beard' because he looked worse without it.<br /><br />I kept awake by noticing which actors and actresses had their earlobes attached or free and noting interesting bits of scenery - if you're dragged along to it, see if you can spot the stuffed buffalo head, just the sort of thing you'd expect in a beach cottage.<br /><br />Apart from the obligatory wedding, there is only one piece of action. You'd have thought that they'd have got it right. Sadly, though, the hit and run accident is carried out by a car that couldn't be there. When the accident is discovered the cast wander about shouting for a character that they can't know is nearby (but we do as the audience). If they don't have any clue that the person is within a couple of miles of the place, then why do they wander about aimlessly shouting for him? I suppose that the director's excuse is that it is supposed to be a half-remembered dream sequence...<br /><br />Another scenery item that caught my attention was a copper bottomed saucepan. I didn't think that the technology to do this was developed until the fifties.