Consider the following bookend quotes from the lush and languid romance which Evening aspires to be:

Your first mistake is like your first kiss—you never forget it.

Is this a mistake we’ll forget, or one we’ll be talking about for years to come?

The answer to that question, of course, depends on one’s definition of the word mistake, and upon a more central plot point: Does Ann end up with Harris, or doesn’t she? As the film itself gives away the answer to the latter question within the first few minutes, it’s pretty clear that director Lajos Koltai is far more interested in definitions than plot points.

For Evening’s intended audience, this will largely work just fine. As one of my female colleagues reminded Jeffrey Overstreet and I following the screening of Evening, women do tend to wax weepily reminiscent about the first cad to whom they lost their hearts. And the cad at the center of this doozy of a weep-fest—a deckhand-turned-doctor named Harris—has such an enormous chip on his shoulder that it just turns into so much maternal-instinct-generating charisma. Or so one must conclude, given the behavior of the women (and even some of the men) in this film.

That “everybody loves Harris” is pretty much a given in Evening, even from the opening frames. A lush Maxfield Parrish New England seaboard fantasy eveningscape introduces the film in quite a promising manner. Young Ann Grant lounges on the deck of a small sailboat drifting in the tide. The aged Ann stands on the shore observing as the boat drifts further and further to sea. “Where’s Harris?” asks the young Ann of the aged. She turns toward the prow of the boat to see that Harris has been there all along…

There’s no question that director Koltai manages the lushness of Evening with aplomb. Every era and imagined setting of the film—from the early 1960s, to present day, to the dying Ann’s fantasies—has its own effectively distinctive cinematographic design. The days of Ann’s youth favor the bright, strong colors brought by broad morning light; the days of Ann’s daughters, Nina and Constance, favor the flatter aspect of the full light of day; and Ann’s deathbed imagination is colored by the Golden Hour hues of evening.

The light of the passing day—and the film’s title itself, of course—is used by Koltai as metaphors for the phases of one’s life. The story told in Evening, as those bookend quotes about mistakes indicate, is about Ann looking back on that “mistake” with Harris and assessing how it affected her own life, her aspirations, her relationship with her two daughters, their own aspirations—and the lives of Harris, Ann’s best friend Lila, and Lila’s brother Buddy. Again, the question is not whether Ann ends up with Harris, or whether her fling with Harris was ill-advised: the question is whether Ann can end up feeling good about the whole thing.

It’s a strange idea from which to derive narrative tension, and to say much more about the plot—other than to mention that Ann, Harris, Lila, and Buddy are all young post-college grads, and that Harris’ wrong-side-of-the-tracks egomania is tied to Lila and Buddy’s very-much-the-right-side-of-the-tracks life of privilege—would spoil the languid feminine pleasure that might be derived from exploring Ann’s delicious reminiscence. (If one happens to be terribly feminine in one’s disposition, that is.)

The plot aside, this film is loaded with stuff designed to play to the female demographic. The young Lila, for instance is (nicely) played by Meryl Streep’s daughter, Mamie Gummer. And who should play the aged Lila but Meryl Streep herself? Likewise, Natasha Richardson plays Ann’s daughter Constance; and who should play the aged Ann but Richardson’s mother, Vanessa Redgrave?

My guess is that the timing of Evening’s release—as well as its demographic-pleasing stuntcasting, its generally ingratiating performances, and its insight into the impenetrably dense female psyche—almost guarantees that this will be one of the major pleasant boxoffice surprises of the summer. It’s just good enough (and plenty weepy enough) to prove a welcome respite for wives and girlfriends sick of being dragged to the testosterone overdosequels known as Die Hard, Spider-Man, Pirates, Fantastic Four, Bourne, Hostel, Ocean’s… After all, what’s the alternative? Knocked Up?

Still, I don’t think we’ll be talking about this particular mistake for much more than a couple of months…

Evening is rated PG-13 for “some thematic elements, sexual material, a brief accident scene and language.” Aside from the fact that teenagers would probably be bored stiff with the film, the rating probably serves as a wise guide. Personally, I think the thematic elements are the most worrisome here: particularly the romanticized notion that self-centered cads are somehow worthy of sympathy and misplaced affection.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Greg attended a film festival screening of Evening.