Starting Out in the Evening

Starting Out in the Evening is a fine, small film about the inevitability of mortality and why it's usually not a good idea to get to know your idols. It is based on a literary novel and about a literary novelist, therefore it is not exactly fast-paced, and focuses on four characters, all of whom are thoughtful and introspective.

The action concerns an aged novelist, played by Frank Langella. He is largely forgotten by the academy, and his four novels are out of print. He is working on a last book, and hopes to live long enough to finish it. Enter Lauren Ambrose, as a graduate student doing her thesis on Langella and his work. She is both charming and aggressive enough to push past his initial resistance, and ends up an integral part of his life.

Meanwhile, Langella's daughter, Lili Taylor, approaches her fortieth birthday. She wants a child, but is adrift in both career and relationships. An old boyfriend, Adrian Lester, returns to her life, but he steadfastly refuses to have children.

All of this is told with exact brush strokes by co-writer and director Andrew Wagner, adapting a novel by Brian Morton. Relationships between older men of letters and vital young women are a dime a dozen in literature, particularly in the works of Philip Roth, but this story tells the familiar in a slightly different way. There is no particular sexual heat, it's more of a co-dependency.

The acting is good, especially by Langella, as a man who of routine and decorum, who wears a coat and tie while working in his home office, and never raises his voice. Ambrose has a tough role as a woman who meets her idol and then complicates both of their lives, but she pulls it off without edging into the cliche of the manic pixie dreamgirl. This is Langella's story, so we don't see Ambrose much outside of his aura. I wonder if the novel delves deeper into her motivations.

Wagner does well his design team to create a wintry New York. Langella's apartment comes across as both cozy and off-putting, a musty library but also a haven for the intellect. Movies about writers are always problematic--there's not much exciting about watching someone type--but Starting Out in the Evening is thoughtful and engrossing.