Sundance. Starting Out in the Evening.

"Adapted from the book by Brian Morton, though it feels like an excellent off-Broadway play, Starting Out in the Evening traces the relationship between Schiller (an outstanding Frank Langella) and Heather (a luminous Lauren Ambrose), a graduate student who wants to write her thesis about the elderly, out-of-print novelist," writes Anthony Kaufman at indieWIRE. "The multi-layered motivations are constant in Starting Out which is one of the reasons why the film is such a kick."

Updated through 1/30.

"Andrew Wagner, whose 2005 home movie-meets-family road comedy The Talent Given Us became a surprise Sundance hit (and my favorite film of that year), returned to Park City in competition on Sunday with the total stylistic reversal Starting Out in the Evening," begins ST VanAirsdale at the Reeler. "Beautifully shot in HD by cinematographer Harlan Bosmajian, Starting Out nevertheless struggles through a few convenient narrative hitches before settling into the character-driven New York chamber drama in which it finds its strongest momentum."

"Like Venus (to which it will surely invite comparisons), Starting Out in the Evening skillfully navigates the terrain of a relationship pitched somewhere between master-pupil and May-December," writes Scott Foundas in Variety. "But Wagner's pic... is a knowing portrait of three complex individuals of very different ages, all of whom feel the breath of Father Time at their necks.... In a career-crowning performance, Langella plays Schiller with utter vulnerability and lack of vanity - the former seducer whose stage Dracula made women swoon here invests himself fully in the part of a man weakened by illness and regret."

Update, 1/30: IndieWIRE interviews Wagner.

Coverage of the coverage: The Park City Index.

Posted by dwhudson at January 29, 2007 1:51 PM