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Technical data
Original title: Evening
Genre: Dramatic
Director: Lajos Voltai
Interpreters: Claire Danes (Ann,
young), Vanessa Redgrave (Ann, aged), Toni Colette (Nina), Natasha
Richardson (Constance),Patrick Wilson (Harris Arden), Hugh Dancy
(Buddy), Glenn Close (Mrs. Wittenborn, aged), Mamie Gummer (Mrs.
Wittenborn, young), Meryl Streep (Leila Ross, aged), Sheila Thomas
(Leila Ross, young), Sarah Viccellio (Lizzie), Kara Doherty (Chloe).
Nationality: United
States/Germany
Distribution: Medusa Film
Year of distribution: 2008
Origin: United States/Germany
(2007)
Content: taken from the romance
"Evening" by Susan Minot
Arrangement of scenes: Michael
Cunningham, Susan Minot
Photography (Scope/coloured):
Gyula Pados
Music: Jan A.P. Kaczmarek
Montage: Allyson C. Johnson
Duration: 116'
Production: Jeff Sharp
DVD: Euro 16,99
The plot
After the inspiration of the
romance Evening
by Susan Minot,
Un amore senza tempo (A timeless
love), narrates the
story of Ann Grant, an aged woman seriously ill. Being bed ridden,
because of an incurable decease, and feeling to be close to her end, she
remembers with nostalgia e regret the most meaningful persons and events
of her life. Between reality and dream, the woman speaks of her
relationship with Harris, a boy with whom she madly fell in love, but
whom her daughters Constance and Nina never knew or heard of. It is
about a youth passion, which was born during some days in which Ann,
young and very beautiful, on the marriage day of her dear friend Leyla,
was invited to a villa, near the seashore, of the Ross family. Harris
was a young doctor, son of the house keeper, whom many local girls were
after. Out of the various stories that were born and crossed one another
during those feast days, the story between Ann and Haris seems to be the
most solid and lasting one, but the events of life took them far and
separated them for ever
Let us trace the phases…
Remembering the main events of a
woman’s life, the director Lajos Koltai makes the balance of an
existence, starting from the casual encounter between two young people
and the love flowing from it. It is a choral narration that joins
auto-biographic splits, utilising a successful interaction between the
past and the present time. A long flashback takes us to the 60s, to a
small island of the Main, catapulted during a marriage snob, by a broken
flashing love and an announced death. We can see the re-construction of
the luxurious residence facing the Atlantic ocean. Among luxurious and
golden environments of the rich Newport, we happen to be present at the
birth of an exclusive and unrepeatable love. Yes, a timeless love.
During the narration, we see the emerging out of feminine figures -who
live within a precise social and family context, yesterday and today- an
everlasting love between a mother and her two daughters; a life that is
going to close and another at its start.
Let us reflect on the words
of the Director Iajos Voltai.
«They speak about
persons, their history and sentiments, in which all men and women can
recognise themselves, and it is this that I am interested in and that I
want to narrate….There has been an exceptional work with the cast, but
actually there has been no type of difficulty. The first person I met,
for this film, was Vanessa Redgrave, in a not to big, but rather
discreet hotel of London, and the encounter was fantastic. I think that
she is the most beautiful woman I ever saw in my life; after introducing
each other, she took my hands and made me sit at her side. She told me
that she had liked my first film very much, that she had seen it the
previous night and had not been able to sleep for the whole night. She
wanted to know everything about how I had realised it and how I had
worked with the actors. Though I had never seen her before, speaking
with her helped me a lot; a woman of a formidable calibre like her
suddenly became for me a friend, just like an old friend. In fact, the
producers who were with us at the appointment, at a certain moment went
away, feeling embarrassed to be between two persons who had met after
many years and had many thinks to say to each other. When I asked her
whether she would be willing to interpret a personage of the film, she
told me that she was there just for that purpose and that she would read
the part again, though she did not feel that it was affine with her,
because she wanted to do it for me. I was moved and we started speaking
about the details of the film, of the suffering characterising the film
and of her role, starting from personal experiences, but also from the
history of Hungary, which she was interested in very much, being she a
person very much politically committed and informed. Many people came to
New York for the “provino” (the film test), even famous actresses,
without my knowing it. Finally, a morning the young woman came, who
plays the part of the two friends in bed, on the morning of the
marriage; a fundamental moment of the film, which is repeated when Meryl
Streep interprets the woman in her old age. She was very clever. She
convinced me of having found a person with the right sensitivity for
the role she would have to play. I called the producers, introduced the
girl to them as an exceptional young woman who looked like Meryl Streep
very much. They answered, “Of course, she is the daughter of Meryl
Streep!”.
Pastoral use
Built up on a thread of memories
with a setting of scenes centred prevalently on the passing time, the
film presents a broken up piece of history in which imaginary loves,
hidden emotions and lacerating rivalries are mounted. We are at the
setting of a life: the original title of the film is Evening. We
hear the constant repetition of a name: Harris. Who is he? This is what
Ann’s daughters ask themselves. Ann, personified by the splendid adult
Vanessa Redgrave, allows the agitation and emotions of her youth love to
be transparent in her face. The story unfolds on two temporal levels:
the past and the present one. It highlights the affective mechanisms
which binds the different personages and, through the flux of their
memories, it allows the surfacing of dreams, passions, regrets,
torments, marriages, deceases and death.
There is a predominance of
women, yet the film describes all the personages with an original touch.
It speaks of everything to everybody, turning prevalently to those who
live, today, in a generational context, characterised by insecurity and
fear. The vision transmits the laceration of the mentioned insecurity,
but also the hard search to individuate the right choices and to carry
the burden, which they imply, today like yesterday. The daughters try to
understand something more about the narration of their mother, but as
this gradually proceeds in the re-construction, they find themselves in
the discussion of their life and their relations. The memory of this
great love, the encounter with her old friend Leyla, the motherhood of
her senior daughters, clear up the last days of Ann and of those who
love her.
Thematic:
Aged persons; woman; family – parents, children; literature; marriage -
couple
Evaluation of CNVF:
Acceptable/ problematic
The film in the press
«Glenn Close, Meryl Streep,
Vanessa Redgrave and Natasha Richardson, the four greatest actresses of
our time, appear surprisingly in an almost all feminine film, supported
on the shoulders of the protagonists Claire Danes and Toni Collette –
sorry if this is little. This is a cast of only women, of great impact
and intensity, that paints a moving and decidedly dramatic story with
the warm colours of the director/photographer” (Diego Altobelli,
www.filmup.com). «Evening,
this is the title of this film translated into Italian as
Un amore senza tempo.
It is something structured as a long inlaid
flashback,
a series of interlaced streaming memories, periodically interrupted by a
return to the present, in a dialectic contraposition used as parameter
of something that happened in the past” (Moira Chiani,
www.cinemavvenire.it).
«A good old movie of the past,
with clearance sale of feelings as it had not happened since long.
Wonderful actresses! Vanessa Redgrave remains agonising on her bed for
116 minutes, Mrs Streep goes to see her and talks with her of an old
love: they make a marvellous duet! Close retorts with a memorable a solo
of suffering. Everything is there to say that the lost time is
regretted. We are in the mood for love, with the Newport of the 30s, a
Hopper-like villa and a Scott Fizgerald atmosphere, with the beautiful
Buddy (Hugh Dancy), filled in with hidden neurosis. A triumph of the
“melò” with return ticket of mother-daughter: Natasha Richardson is
truly an offspring of Redgrave.
Music swing, everything
passionately squared by Koltai who arrived in this Hollywood via
Budapest» (Maurizio Porro,
Il Corriere della Sera,
1st May 2008) «With A timeless love (original title:
evening) the Hungarian Lajos Koltai, prestigious director of
photography (he has worked also in Italy with Joseph Tornatore) and
second proof director –the first one “Fateless” spoke of a small boy
during the holocaust and was inspired by an auto-biographic romance of
the Nobel Imre Kertész- gives us a tenderly romantic movie, with
continued flashbacks;
he confronts the life of two women, Ann Lord (Vanessa Redgrave) and
Lila (Marnie Gummer), and some daughters of the first one, Constance
(Natasha Richardson) and Nina (Toni Colette), asking himself: how much
do we know about the “life experience” of the one who assisted us at
childhood and followed us as grown ups? Koltai suggests that the power
of feelings goes beyond the contingent vicissitudes, can give colour to
an old friendship and can pass from mothers on to their children.
The thickness of “A timeless
love” is dense, though, somehow, it is an out-fashioned story, and
it seems to update the taste of romances in appendix. We repeat: it does
not remind us at all of the typical narrations utilised by the people of
Hollywood, when they narrate things of the past, and take back those of
some exponents, the already remembered Szabò and Makk, an important
season of the Majaro cinema. Like them, Koltai makes alive , like a
beating heart, a memory of Ann, which the director compares with the
flight of a night butterfly or of a glow-worm” (Francesco Bolzoni,
Avvenire,
26th April, 2008).
Teresa Braccio
Centro Comunicazione e Cultura
Paoline
Via del Castro
Pretorio, 16 - 00185 Rome
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