A FILM THAT opens at the seashore is a great way to hook me. I was already looking forward to a film with sufficient roles for women, one where there would be room for more than one headliner in the same story! This heftiest female cast ever, promised quite a bit. It delivered enough to satisfy me. I know it will be relegated to the art house circuit, because it is mostly about women. No matter. I also know that had this same story featured a predominantly male cast, it would be lauded a great, historical drama, not a chick flick. This fact is the usual road taken by films with female casts about female's lives. Again, no matter to me. Evening is a cinematographic ode to the sea, women in general, men and women together—and two architecturally interesting homes, all in one, lingering, photo montage.

The beautiful seaside location, almost a character itself, it is so gorgeous. I want to go to the beach now, today. Evening opens with a scene of the rocky shore at sunset, on the eastern seaboard. Scudding, and heavy, dark gray clouds on the horizon let through the last rays of a setting sun, splashing the rocks into molten gold. An older woman in a black evening gown stands into the breeze, up on the rocks. Just at the shoreline, in the water, rocks an itsy-bitty sailboat, with a younger woman, in white, lying on the deck…arm offside, fingers in the quiet water. This is pure art.


The story is a bit less artsy. Evening drifts from today to yesterday and back, with the wandering reveries of Ann Grant Lord (Vanessa Redgrave). She is most certainly in a morphine-induced slumber. Brief times of lucidness with her daughters, Constance (Natasha Richardson) and Tina (Toni Collette) are lovely, if not bewildering to the girls. Ann is a dying person fortunate enough to have this kind of care at home, complete with an experienced deathbed nurse, Mrs. Brown (veteran actor Eileen Atkins), giving a bit of her Irish-brogue-laden sage insights to the daughters and their mother.


Ann's wakeful reveries imply mystifying flashes of people and events of which the sisters have never heard. The story slips back and forth between two family homes, Ann's imbedded in today and the Wittenborn mansion in the past. In Ann's gracious home, her daughters are holding vigil—the other is a posh, seaside manse for the summering 'Wittenborns' of the 1950s, where a young Ann (Claire Daines) visits this Newport home. She will stand as maid-of-honor for her girlfriend Lila Wittenborn (Mamie Gummer). Claire Daines and Vanessa Redgrave have the same angular facial lines which allows the constant slippage in time to be smoother than some films manage (Notebook, etc.) Daines made Ann alluring and vulnerable, the young wanna-be singer with hope and her whole life ahead of her.


The daughters know nothing of this pivotal weekend in their mother's life before they were born. The nurse, Mrs. Brown, is there with Ann for her nighttime wakefulness. When a certain name is mentioned, she slips off to a phone with Ann's address book. This is how we get the tender, loving visit from the aged Lila Ross nee Wittenborn (none other than the amazing Meryl Streep), still married to the groom of this long-ago wedding tableau.

Interestingly, real-life mothers and daughters playing generational roles are Vanessa Redgrave and Natasha Richardson, as well as Meryl Streep and Mamie Gummer. The mother/daughter dynamic is enhanced by these pairings of actors who are also relatives.


Susan Minot wrote the story, and with Michael Cunningham adapted her novel to an ambitious script, with rather too obvious connecting shifts from today's snippets of memories and thoughts to yesteryear's relevant comings and goings. Lajos Koltai, a Hungarian Cinematographer turned Director with his 2005 drama, Fateless, about a 14-year-old boy in WWII Hungary, was his successful bid as a Director. Koltai, a masterful Cinematographer, is well on the way to directing nice vintage pieces, as he has served as Cinematographer on some 70 projects set in one historical setting or another (Malèna with Monica Bellucci set in a WWII Italian town, Being Julia set in London of the 1930s with Annette Benning, The Emperor's Club with Kevin Kline, and so on). Gyula Pados, also on Fateless, takes over as director of Photography, accepting Koltai's obvious touch.


Koltai's direction leaves the viewer with an overall aftertaste of individual dignity in the face of societal scrutiny, perseverance for its own sake and an overriding zest for life. The filmmakers all did a fair conversion from the book. Minot likes dramatic romances about mothers and daughters, I suppose, as her first real film, Stealing Beauty, with Liv Tyler, had a similar mother/daughter theme. For Evening, Minot is blessed with as many Stars as those in the evening skies over her love-struck kids at the seashore.


Minot either really likes or really doesn't like the eastern seaboard high-society 'Wittenborn' types. She has an arsenal of names like Haverford or nicknames like Pip and Peach—she resisted a Biff. Minot's Lila and her brother Buddy (of course not his real name) are hopelessly caught in the snare of their bloodlines and their heritage. Completely aware of their station in life, Lila can no more not marry Carl Ross than she could be with the family housekeeper's son and love of her life, Dr. Harris Arden. Harris, still close to the family, is present for the wedding weekend, which is how Ann and Harris meet. Tearful goodbyes finished, Lila heads out on her honeymoon with Carl, and young Ann heads out into the woods with Harris. I know, weird—life is that way.


Lifelike, bizarre events then forever separate them. These events are the scenes where young Mrs. Wittenborn, Lila's mother, and mother to Buddy, give Glenn Close one of her spectacularly emotional scenes for which we all watch and wait.

Then Harris is out of Ann's life. Her girls would recognize the name otherwise. Who is Harris? Their mother awakes and then slips back asleep, each detail generating more questions than answers. Toni Collette shines as a daughter unsure of her place, fearful of relationships, her father being just her mother's first husband. Her Tina sifts through the minutiae of her mother's life, seeking a hint of Harris. Who was he? Who was he to her Mother? What did they do to Buddy, really?

Mom slips in and out, nebulous, shimmering glimpses of today and yesterdays—asking where had the days gone. Familiar?

Column rating: See?
Absolutely, this film is very watch-able, even given the delicacy of the subject matter

See With Your Children?
Use discretion; at least they should be mature about the subject of dying, especially if they have grandparents