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>> Despite great performances, sprawling
chick flick Evening is overwrought

by MATTHEW HAYS

There are some powerful emotions running through Evening, the star-studded weepie directed by Hungarian filmmaker Lajos Koltai from the novel by Susan Minot. Two thirtysomething women (Toni Collette and Natasha Richardson) hold vigil over their mother’s bed as she lies close to death (Mom is played by Richardson’s real-life mother Vanessa Redgrave).

Collette and Richardson have sibling issues.

But that’s only part of the picture; Redgrave flashes back 50 years to when she was Claire Danes, an enchanting young singer being courted by cute young men. Her close friend (played by Mamie Gummer) is getting married, but alas, she’s in love with her gorgeous childhood friend (Patrick Wilson), a dashing young doctor who everyone seems to have the hots for. Hugh Dancy is a drunk who pines after Danes. Given the two timelines in the movie, as well as the multiple requited/unrequited love streams, a flow chart is probably in order.

There are some stunning performances here—just amazing. Danes is fantastic, but everyone delivers delicate, thoughtful turns as their respective characters. Meryl Streep and Glenn Close also show up in smaller but still pivotal roles.

But Evening suffers, somehow, from simply being too overwrought. This is a chick flick, that’s for sure—someone breaks down in tears in what seems like every scene in the film—and there’s plenty of hand-wringing about precisely what would have happened if that guy who banged someone all those years ago had married them rather than just had a fling. (Trust me, if I understand the differences between the sexes correctly, that bang you’re waxing nostalgic about was a whole lot less meaningful to him than it was to you.)

They’re a gorgeous cast. The light falls on Danes’s and Wilson’s faces with a distinct beauty. These are young, budding stars, and they rise to the challenges of the script admirably. But there’s a critical mass to all this melodrama and pathos. Evening offers us a variation on a theme made famous by the Rolling Stones. Life probably won’t bring you what you want; if you’re lucky, you might just get something close to what you need. It’s a simple idea wrapped up in a tangled movie.

Evening opens this Friday, June 29

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