Evening

This week's film at Maiden Alley Cinema certainly looks to be an interesting one. Here's the description at the MAC website:

"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 (Vanessa Redgrave) reveals a long-held secret to her concerned daughters; Constance (Natasha 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 before, 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 (Mamie 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. "

A list of gifted actors this long in any one production is the subject of an ongoing gag of mine and the S-Man's. Our theory is that too many big names is the kiss of death for any film. Maybe this one will be the exception. I'm certainly intrigued to see two pairs of real-life mother and daughters as well as one of my all time favorites, Claire Danes, even if she does seem to have acquired a whole new face along the way.

Alas, the kiss-of-death theory might hold true once again. I've now done a little checking, and the Rotten Tomatoes site has the film coming in 72% rotten and according to Roger Ebert:

There are few things more depressing than a weeper that doesn't make you weep. "Evening" creeps through its dolorous paces as prudently as an undertaker. Upstairs, in the big newport mansion, a woman is dying in a Martha Stewart bedroom. She takes a very long time to die, because the whole movie consists of flashbacks from her reveries. This gives us time to reflect on deep issues, such as, who is this woman?

(I can't help it, I love a good snarky review.)

Oh, well. It was fun while it lasted.