Starting Out in the Evening

Starting Out in the Evening ***

Directed by Andrew Wagner
Written by Fred Parnes, based on the novel by Brian Morton

Starring:
Lauren Ambrose as Heather
Frank Langella as Leonard Schiller
Karl Bury as Frederick
Lili Taylor as Ariel Schiller
Jessica Hecht as Sandra Bennett
Anitha Gandhi as Chelsea

111 Minutes(Rated PG-13 for sexual content, language and brief nudity. )
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What is making 2007 such a great year for movies, especially this award season that seems never ending, is that there is no clear front runner for anything. There are musings and predictions-I have Javier Bardem as a hopeful for Best Supporting Actor, and yet Casey Affleck could get it, and Ellen Page as a hopeful for Best Actress, but yet Julie Christie also has a shot. There are so many great picks out there, so many hopefuls, so many choices, and yet they could only eventually settle on one. Usually come this time of year we already can guess who will win their awards-and what will take home the coveted Best Picture. "Starting Out in the Evening," which I missed at this years Toronto Film Festival, but has at least been given a limited release, is a little film, yes, and yet its also something that is threatening to take home one Oscar that night in February from several other deserving folks-Best Actor. In the end perhaps the only consideration for awards that this film should receive is for Best Actor, but its a damn high bar that it set. Here we have Frank Langella, an actor that I don't exactly know much about-although I did see him in "Good Night, and Good Luck" two years ago. And yet I already get the feeling that this could be the best work he has ever done-a performance of such subtle perfection, nuance, and its clearly an actor that has mastered his craft.

Langella plays Leonard Schiller, an aging writer who has four novels under his belt, and he is struggling to complete the next one before he dies. When is that? Well, according to Leonard it has to be soon. After all, he is old. When we first meet Leonard, after a shot of him typing away at his typewriter, an image brought back at the very end of the film only in a different light, he is at a diner meeting with Heather, a college student who has decided to write her masters thesis on the old writer-claiming that one of his books changed her life once. She also intends on having people rediscover the great man's work. Leonard kindly declines the invitation, but soon finds himself being interviewed by Heather, and having her live in his shadows. Then it becomes clear that there is more on Heather's mind than just a formal business agreement. We also meet Ariel, Leonard's yoga instructor daughter who has settled her mind on getting a baby, even if it means lying to her boyfriend about birth control, or lack thereof. She also finds herself getting involved with an ex, who she broke up with years before because of their lack of agreement in wanting a child.

"Starting Out in the Evening" is loose on plot, and more about character and relationships. This makes sense if you know anything about the director. Andrew Wagner's first film, which came out two years ago, was the rather bland and annoying, yet extremely true and raw, "The Talent Given Us," a mockumentary about his own family taking a road trip to visit him. Another movie focusing on relationships-young and old, family and friends, etc. This is a story about a man who is giving up in his prime-ready to die upon the completion of his book-who realizes that there is so much around him that he hasn't taken care of yet. Langella's performance is terrific-one of calm wanderings from scene to scene, who voices his opinions whenever he feels like, and yet it is the moments where he is not speaking that are the most absorbing. His eyes, from the very first shot, tell us everything that we need to know. Lauren Ambrose (from TV's Six Feet Under) as Heather gives a very fine performance as well, a somewhat stuck up college student who tries to put up a more mature face than she should. And we see her true self behind her at times, and we know that she is clearly putting on an act at certain moments to try and be more respected than she is. She's intelligent, yes, but certainly not as much as she thinks she is. Lili Taylor is fine as the daughter, yet I never found myself as involved in her subplot than in the main one. I understand why it was there, and by the end of the film you will too, but it rather clogged the film up-I wanted more Langella and less of her.

I did have a little problem with the screenplay. There are several scenes where characters discuss various literary works, extremely little known authors, and really begin to have extended scenes about literary criticism. It went to a point where the literature conversations being something to expand on the characters and who they were, to just being a little self-indulgent. I wasn't a huge fan of Wagner's "The Talent Given Us" as I said before-another film that just seemed a bit self-indulgent, even though I understood what he wanted to do. But I can recommend this film for the performances, and almost solely for that. It's a nice little movie, one that falls a little throughout thanks to Wagner's screenplay, but yet saves itself constantly every time Frank Langella pops up on the screen. It really is a masterful performance.