I never liked Steel Magnolias, loathed it in fact, all that saccharin sweetness and artificial feeling. Women brought together by a homemaker’s magazine illusion of what life is.
Evening tells it the way it is – sweetness is replaced by depth and artifice by truth. Evening is the thinking chick’s flick straight up, but there is much to enlighten and entertain and move men too.
The action centers on the deathbed of matriarch Ann (Vanessa Redgrave) as her daughters (real life daughter Natasha Redgrave with Toni Collette) wait for the painful conclusion to what they think has been a dull and troubled life.
Is she delusional when she calls out for Harris, the ‘true love of my life’?
The girls are mystified. They have never heard of Harris, or the dress she’s calling out for or why she regrets not going sailing. Or why she says she and Harris killed someone.
Aside from the outrageousness of the dying woman’s words, which they dismiss, they don’t like to think that their mother has led a secret life.
Constance (Richardson) blames the medication and demands that Nina (Collette) stop torturing Ann with new questions. But Nina needs to know more about her mother’s secret life before it’s too late.
We see what occurred in Ann’s life fifty years earlier through flashbacks and delusions. Young Ann (Claire Danes) was a lower middle class girl, introduced into Rhode Island high society through her best friend Lila (Mamie Gummer) whose much younger and alcoholic brother is in love with her.
Lila’s mother Mrs. Wittenborn (Glenn Close) is a rigid matriarch, chilly and unyielding and runs a tight ship. Her head is full of wedding plans and she refuses to see her son’s tragic predicament.
There is a lot to digest in the film and thanks to its flawless performances, it is delicious.
The jewel of the piece is a scene between the elderly Ann and Lila (Meryl Streep) as they remember lost adolescent dreams and measure them against their lives as they turned out. It’s also wonderful to watch the Richardsons and Streep as the elder version of her daughter’s (Gummer’s) character. So much talent.
The filmmakers visually contrast upper crust life in the tiny seaside mansions of the fifties and in the contemporary times of the modern story.The contrast is a story in itself.
The pristine, sharp edged past versus the slightly overgrown, unkempt present. The starchy formal outfits of the past versus the casual contemporary clothes of Ann’s daughters.The manicured house and lawns then and the soiled looking, rundown, unpainted mansion of the third generation.
It’s also true of the lesser actor’s work – never Streep or Richardson! - Claire Danes is the prime offender. Her style is untrained, naturalistic and lazy, gone to seed.
She weaves and bobs her head and calls it acting. Her character states something and Danes belabors it by nodding incessantly. It’s often enough to say the lines and let them work, but Danes can’t leave them un-jiggled.
Hope she is open to watching the performances of the older actors.
Evening, based on the Susan Minot novel, is a lot to take, emotionally speaking. It is difficult and painful because we can see that as we get older, things don’t get easier, they get harder.
The camerawork is exquisite, otherworldly, evocative and captivating, and sadly shows that the past is often brighter than the present.
But hey, it’s just one film teams point of view. We don’t have to live in the past. Meryl Steep’s Lila doesn’t.
Evening
In USA theatres June 29. MPAA: Rated PG-13 for some thematic elements, sexual material, a brief accident scene and language.
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