Great characters prevail in ‘Starting Out’
Roadside Attractions
Watching "Starting Out in the Evening," it's hard to imagine Frank Langella was once a menacing, handsome "Dracula."
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In "Evening," he plays an aging, has-been of an author who wears a suit and tie all of the time, even late at night in his home. He is soft-spoken, intelligent and sad as he wrestles with his fifth novel.
He still pecks away at a typewriter, although this one appears to be electric, so he's only a generation behind.
Into his life comes the cute, perky Heather Wolfe, played by Lauren Ambrose of "Six Feet Under" fame.
She is a huge fan of his first two works. It appears everyone was. But his next two novels lacked the same bite and flair and this fifth offering, after years in the process, is going nowhere.
Heather wants to do her masters thesis on Langella's character, Leonard Schiller. She thinks she can somehow revive his career in his autumn years.
Langella, in his prim and proper way, cautiously lets this girl into his life.
She's smart. She knows her literature. Despite the age difference, they share the same interests when it comes to books. A sort of romance develops.
While most girls her age may be partying, Heather goes to book lectures with Leonard.
These are two deep, complex, fascinating characters. That is often enough for one movie, but there's the interesting subplot involving Leonard's daughter as a bonus. She's played by Lili Taylor. Nearing 40, she's had a difficult relationship with men but yearns for family and child. She thinks she can't have both, so she stops using birth control with her latest boyfriend, hoping to at least have the baby. When he asks her to marry him, she is scared and runs back to a previous relationship, that hadn't worked out.
Taylor's character can't make sense of her own life and wonders what this pretty young girl is doing at all hours with her father. It sort of all gets sorted out when Leonard has a stroke.
This is a marvelous, literate, compelling and enjoyable character study. I have to say they even get Langella's glasses design right. It's what my grandfather wore in the 60s and 70s.
"Starting Out in the Evening" was deserving of Oscar consideration. Why it wasn't, I don't know. Maybe the Academy was afraid a movie about books and thought would get people away from theatres and into the library.
That would turn into a horror picture, wouldn't it?
From WEEKENDER, Sept. 26, 2008.
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