Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Cosmic Closet (A) on November 12, 2009 at 11:08:48

“Starting Out in the Evening" is a tender, quiet story about an aging, dignified author who is all but forgotten until a young grad student shows up on his doorstep. She wants to write her thesis about his once-famous-but-now-out-of-print novels. He resists. She persists. Things happen.

Frank Langella gives (yet another) master class in acting in this. Low-key, old-fashionedly polite, yet with small touches of humor never completely hidden, he is amazing to behold.
Lauren Ambrose is all youthful enthusiasm and hero-worship in the beginning, and while her character changes, we are never completely sure what her ultimate feelings are.

There is a sub-plot involving the Professor’s daughter and her romantic problems, but the film could easily have stayed just on Langella and Ambrose the whole way.

The film celebrates literature as art, the power of timeless virtues and the notion that the best change so often seems to come at the worst moments.

An adult film, in the true sense of the word.

C.

Edits: 11/12/09