Starting Out in the Evening (2007)

Though he's spent most of his career as a character actor in supporting roles, Frank Langella gives the lead performance of a lifetime in STARTING OUT IN THE EVENING, based on the novel by Brian Morton. Flanked by Lili Taylor and Lauren Ambrose, Langella is the central piece in a film that focuses on its characters. The film begins with aging writer Leonard Schiller (Langella, SUPERMAN RETURNS), a man who feels as obsolete as the typewriter he is pounding away at. Though he has four novels to his credit, he has been working on his fifth for a decade. Enter Heather Wolfe (Ambrose, SIX FEET UNDER), a grad student w...
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ho plans to write her thesis on Schiller's work. She cajoles the reluctant man into helping her, and they begin a curious friendship. Meanwhile, Schiller's daughter Ariel (Taylor, SIX FEET UNDER) struggles not only with her elderly father, but also with her own desire to have children as she approaches 40. She also grapples with the decision of reconnecting with an ex-boyfriend (Adrian Lester, HUSTLE).

As the fading writer Schiller, Langella doesn't give a bold performance that screams for Oscar's attention. Instead, the actor commands the screen with a quiet presence. Heather's attempts at friendship with Schiller--and eventual seduction--may feel awkward at times within the film, but Ambrose's performance is quite genuine. As always, Taylor is impressive, and it's good to see her get a heftier role. The film's other central character is New York's Upper West Side, a player that should receive top billing. Director Andrew Wagner (THE TALENT GIVEN US) allows the neighborhood to play a central role within his engaging film.
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Frank Langella (Dracula, Good Night, and Good Luck.) stars in Andrew Wagner's independent drama Starting Out in the Evening, an adaptation of the acclaimed 1999 best-seller by Brian Morton. Langella plays Leonard Schiller, a once-celebrated author whose first four novels inspired Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose) to pursue a career as a writer. These days, Leonard is still working toward completion of the novel that has occupied his life for nearly a decade. On the surface, Leonard has removed himself completely from the deep-seated need for success that characterized his life at an earlier point in time; but on a m...
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ore buried level, he still longs for his fiction to be rediscovered and re-acclaimed. Now an eager graduate student in the throes of her thesis, Heather is writing her dissertation on Schiller, and promptly convinces him that she can use the thesis to regenerate popularity and discovery of his work. Heather also projects personal interest in Leonard, however, which cuts straight through to the core of his loneliness and brings him in touch with his need for a meaningful relationship even as it leaves him feeling shaken and increasingly uncertain. Meanwhile, Leonard finds that his relationship with his daughter, Ariel (Lili Taylor), is challenged, both by Heather's presence and by Ariel's decision to begin dating her former boyfriend Casey (Adrian Lester) once again -- a fact that Leonard finds most upsetting thanks to his disapproval of Casey. Suddenly, Leonard feels his entire world turned upside down, from his familial relationships to the security of his writing to his own physical vitality -- but he is also taking risks and plunging headfirst into the core of life for the first time, thus living out the principles long celebrated and upheld in his fiction and giving himself the capacity to grow.
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The solitary life of a writer is shaken when a smart, ambitious graduate student convinces him that her thesis will bring him back into the literary spotlight.

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Een ambitieuze jonge vrouw, net afgestudeerd, forceert een ontmoeting met een schrijver wiens carrière in het slop is geraakt. Ze overtuigt hem ervan dat haar scriptie zijn carrière kan doen herrijzen.

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