Evening review

Flitting between time frames, Evening teases out parallels between its female characters’ lives as they muse on love, memory and regret. It’s a set-up that’s worked before for The Hours screenwriter Michael Cunningham, but fails here to resonate on any deep level. Ann (Vanessa Redgrave) reminisces on her deathbed while her daughters wait for the inevitable. Lucky for us, the sickroom monotony is broken up by delirious visions and flashbacks to the ’50s high-society wedding where Ann (now played by Claire Danes) met Harris (Patrick Wilson), her ‘first mistake’. Adapting from Susan Minot’s bestseller, Hungarian director Lajos Koltai’s (Fateless) pulls together a formidable cast – Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Toni Collette – but then leaves them to wade through a sickly stew of star-gazing, butterfly-chasing and sappy music.