features Acting with a capital "A," pulled off by serious thespians putting years of training to the test.
Evening (2007)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:121
Fresh:33
Rotten:88
Average Rating:4.9/10
Consensus: Beautifully filmed, but decidedly dull, Evening is a collossal waste of a talented cast.
Rated: PG-13 [See Full Rating] for some thematic elements, sexual material, a brief accident scene and language
Runtime: 1 hr 57 mins
Genre: , Romance, Period Piece, Theatrical Release
Theatrical Release:Jun 29, 2007 Wide
Box Office: $12,406,646
Synopsis: Evening unites a stellar cast, and is based on the beloved novel by Susan Minot and adapted for the screen by Ms. Minot and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Cunningham (The Hours), under the... Evening unites a stellar cast, and is based on the beloved novel by Susan Minot and adapted for the screen by Ms. Minot and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Cunningham (The Hours), under the direction of Lajos Koltai (Fateless), who was previously an Academy Award-nominated cinematographer. Evening is a deeply emotional film that illuminates the timeless love which binds mother and daughter – seen through the prism of one mother’s life as it crests with optimism, navigates a turning point, and ebbs to its close. Two pairs of real-life mothers and daughters – Vanessa Redgrave and Natasha Richardson, and Meryl Streep and Mamie Gummer – portray, respectively, a mother and her daughter and the mother’s best friend at different stages in life. Overcome by the power of memory, Ann Lord (Ms. Redgrave) reveals a long-held secret to her concerned daughters; Constance (Ms. Richardson), a content wife and mother, and Nina (Toni Collette), a restless single woman. Both are bedside when Ann calls out for the man she loved more than any other. But who is this “Harris,” wonder her daughters, and what is he to our mother? While Constance and Nina try to take stock of Ann’s life and their own lives, their mother is tended to by a night nurse (Eileen Atkins) as she journeys in her mind back to a summer weekend some fifty years ago, when she was Ann Grant (Claire Danes)… ...a young woman who has come from New York City to be maid of honor at the high-society Newport wedding of her dearest friend from college, Lila Wittenborn (Ms. Gummer). The bride-to-be is jittery, and turns to her maid of honor rather than her own mother (Glenn Close) for support. Ann stays close to her friend, yet is even closer to Lila’s irrepressible brother Buddy (Hugh Dancy). Unexpected feelings surge forth once Ann meets wedding guest Harris Arden (Patrick Wilson), a lifelong friend and intimate of the Wittenborn family. Ann’s love for Harris will change her life, and those of her daughters, forever. -- © Focus Features [More]
Starring: Vanessa Redgrave, Claire Danes, Patrick Wilson, Toni Collette
Starring: Vanessa Redgrave, Claire Danes, Patrick Wilson, Toni Collette, Natasha Richardson, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Hugh Dancy, Mamie Gummer
Director: Lajos Koltai
Director: Lajos Koltai
Screenwriter: Michael Cunningham, Susan Minot
Producer: Jeff Sharp
Composer: Jan A.P. Kaczmarek
Studio: Focus Features
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Reviews for Evening
As a fan of Claire Danes, Patrick Wilson, and Hungarian cinematographers and directors, I went into Evening with much enthusiasm. I left the theatre feeling anything but enthused.
Not see Evening? It's like having to say no to a Jane Austen adaptation.
It suffocates in all its blue-blooded proprieties and cloying sentimentalities.
For a movie that begins on such shaky footing, Evening packs an impassioned wallop by the end.
If nothing else, Evening proves that there are such things as mistakes, by featuring two hours of bad choices and half-executed ideas.
A weepie examination of female and sexual identity whose worth is roughly equal to that of a used Kleenex.
While all of that modern commentary and magical realism may work in Minot's novel, on film it feels extraneous and even silly.
It's just a shame Danes and the others are working with one arm tied behind them, so to speak, due to a lack of inspired material.
Despite strong performances from its excellent cast, Lajos Koltai's wistful adaptation of Susan Minot's novel doesn't quite connect.
Evening's visual period splendour, its vivid characterizations and their comfortably clichéd relationships somehow draw us in and make us care.
Though the filmmaking is uneven, Evening redeems itself in its marvelous cast, which echoes the movies' themes by showcasing two real-life mother-daughter acting duos.
Evening achieves a kind of wisdom, though it's a strange and bitter wisdom. The film arrives at a pessimistic and almost nihilistic view of life as something not very important -- and then invites us to take strength and comfort in the notion.
Evening reaches for depth, at times plodding, never cloddish. The lessons about choice and loss and getting on in life have some decent heft, and there is a sunset magic in Redgrave's eyes.
The tone, in turn, moves from arch to soapy to poignant. Yet it's the story that one can never quite get one's arms around.
Danes, radiant with intelligence, warmth and common sense, captures your heart. Sadly, the same cannot be said of Evening.
The uneven filmmaking renders Minot's ideas impossibly trite. ...Ugh.
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