Evening

The first thing you notice about this adaptation of Susan Minot8217;s novel by the same name is its remarkable cast. The second thing that grips you is the cinematography. Shot mostly by the seaside, Evening is breathtaking in its beauty.

And then as the film goes on, and on, it hits you: these trappings don8217;t really amount to much. The plot of a mother on her deathbed remembering a brief moment from her past when life was full of possibilities, with her two daughters attending on her and reflecting on their own life8217;s choices, is just the skeleton. Koltai is trying to impress, and trying to make you weep, and won8217;t stop at anything, not even at dressing up night nurses in gowns twinkling with stars and giving them a strange Irish accent.

You understand that the idea was to give the film a dreamy look, as the memory lies in the mind of a dying woman. However, translated on screen, the film meanders, with lots happening of no consequence and lots others you want to know about remaining untouched.

Redgrave plays the mother Ann Lord, and Toni Collette and Natasha Richardson her two daughters.

In flashback, interspersed with shots of her dying, a young Ann Danes arrives at her best friend8217;s wedding. Two things are immediately obvious: that her friend Lila is richer than she imagined and that she is entering into a marriage of convenience rather than love.

Even as Ann, prompted by Lila8217;s brother Buddy, tries to dissuade her from going ahead with the wedding, she finds herself attracted to a man named Harris. He is Lila and Buddy8217;s childhood friend, the son of their family servant who has grown up to be a doctor with his heart in the right place. But, as it turns out, almost everyone including Buddy is in love with Harris, and really none of them can admit that.

On her deathbed, Ann calls Harris her only love, and her first mistake. She regrets what might have been, what all seemed within reach that brief summer so long ago. And eventually realises that this is what life is 8212; about choices. And while sometimes you may wish you had made another one, life goes on and so do you.

8220;There8217;s no such thing as a mistake,8221; Ann tells her daughters. 8220;You get nervous, but you sing anyways.8221;

Sounds wonderful. But in this adaptation these are mere words. The problem is the Ann-Lila-Harris-Buddy relationship of the 1950s, on which these words are hung and which seems stilted and manufactured. Ann is impossibly exuberant, and Dancy as Buddy irritatingly morose and unconvincingly drunk. Lila has little to do, but she strikes the only right note as a girl who has chosen everyday happiness over momentary ecstasy.

It is Harris who is the biggest disappointment. Played by Patrick Wilson, he is wishy-washy, distant and cold. Does he consider Lila and Buddy8217;s claims on him descended from the servant-lord relationship his family had with theirs? Is it why he is drawn to Ann? You can8217;t tell from Wilson8217;s bland expression. And it8217;s impossible to see what a city girl like Ann, with few pretensions or hangovers herself, sees in him. Except, of course, that he keeps looking up at the sky and naming stars after her.

A girl like Danes with a guy like Wilson, now that8217;s what some would call a real mistake.