Susan Granger’s review of “Evening” (Focus Features)
When Vanessa Redgrave and her real-life daughter, Natasha Richardson, and Meryl Streep and her real-life daughter, Mamie Gummer, are on the screen, this generational drama is divine. When they’re not, it suffers mightily.
Redgrave plays aging Ann Lord who, lying in her deathbed, attended by a nurse (Eileen Atkins) and two bickering daughters (Natasha Richardson, Toni Collette), remembers a pivotal weekend when she was an aspiring singer from New York.
In her reverie, her younger self (Claire Danes) shows up in Newport, Rhode Island, for the genteel wedding of her best friend, Lila Wittenborn (Mamie Gummer), in a baronial beach house, where Lila’s socialite parents (Glenn Close, Barry Bostwick) reign and her self-destructive brother Buddy (Hugh Dancy) is on a perpetual drunk. Hovering in the background is an attractive young doctor (Patrick Wilson), the housekeeper’s son, on whom everyone – Lila, Ann and Buddy – dotes.
Based on a novel by Susan Minot, who collaborated on the screenplay with Michael Cunningham (“The Hours”), the fragmented story works far better on paper than on celluloid. I suspect that’s also the fault of Hungarian cinematographer-turned-director Lajos Koltai, who allows far too many scenes to run on far too long. In addition, Koltai and film editor Allyson C. Johnson shift time frames clumsily, so the pivotal scene, when Meryl Streep appears as an elderly Lila, seems a bit forced.
Coltish Claire Danes should not have been cast as a young Vanessa Redgrave. Their voices, features and acting styles are entirely different. On the other hand, the genetic inheritance of Mamie Gummer from Meryl Streep is remarkable. Watch for Mamie – she’s going to be a star! On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Evening” fades to a stultified 6, becoming a luminous meditation on mortality.
