EVENING
Year: 2007
USA: Focus Features
UK: Icon Film Distribution
Cast: Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Vanessa Redgrave, Patrick Wilson, Hugh Dancy, Natasha Richardson, Mamie Gummer, Eileen Atkins, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Barry Bostwick, Sarah Viccellio, Cheryl Lynn Bowers, Chris Stack, David Furr
Director: Lajos Koltai
Country: USA
USA & UK: 117 mins
USA Rated: PG-13 for some thematic elements, sexual material, a brief accident scene and language
UK Certificate: 12A contains one use of strong language
USA Release Date: 29 June 2007 (Limited Release)
UK Release Date: 21 September 2007
Synopsis
Her greatest secret was her greatest gift.
EVENING is based on the beloved novel by Susan Minot and adapted for the screen by Ms. Minot and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Cunningham (THE HOURS), under the direction of Hungarian filmmaker Lajos Koltai (FATELESS), who was previously an Academy Award-nominated cinematographer.
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 ago, 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.
