Movie review Starting Out in the Evening
March 22nd, 2008, 9:26 pm Hobbies And Interests
The short-attention-span description of “Starting Out in the Evening” is that it’s a dirty old man story - a May-December romance between a long-forgotten writer and the pretty grad student who chooses him as her thesis topic.But that’s selling short a film of unexpected depths, carefully observed emotions and sublime performances. It’s a thinking person’s movie in the best sense of the phrase.Now in his 70s, Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella in a transforming performance) is a forgotten man. Retired from teaching literature, his four novels long out of print, he’s an anachronism a writer of the old school who dons a jacket and tie to peck away at his typewriter in the solitude of his Upper West Side apartment.He has been working on his latest novel for a decade and doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere.Still, writing is his job, and when graduate student Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose) requests a meeting, Leonard intends to turn her down. His days are numbered, he explains, and he must finish his work without distraction.Heather, though, isn’t easily dismissed. She’s smart, opinionated, charming and ambitious. She thinks her thesis might revive Leonard’s career - even lead to a reissue of his books. And though he thinks he’s beyond caring, Leonard responds to her flattery.Before long Heather becomes a frequent visitor, picking through Leonard’s memories and motivations and frequently taking the old writer to moments in his past that he’d just as soon avoid.One of the marvels of Ambrose’s performance (and of the screenplay by director Andrew Wagner and Fred Parnes) is Heather’s delicious ambivalence. Is she a canny manipulator, or is her affection for Leonard the real deal? Has she gotten past the literary icon she hopes to exploit to appreciate the man behind the mask? How far will she go?All this makes for some wonderfully sharp mano a mano acting, and the stew gets extra seasoning from a subplot involving Leonard’s daughter, Ariel (Lili Taylor). A former dancer now teaching yoga, Ariel has just resumed an affair with an old flame (Adrian Lester). But the centerpiece of the film is Langella, who utterly loses himself inside Leonard’s slow, owl-like physicality. Confined mostly to apartments and restaurant interiors, “Starting Out in the Evening” could have been painfully claustrophobic. But under Wagner’s direction and shorn of cinematic tricks, this story feels limited only by the boundaries of human expression.Like Leonard, the film is superficially old-fashioned but capable of unexpected emotion. It creeps up on you.
Tags: apartment, emotions, lai, mom, ponds, s books, yogaRelated posts
