'Evening' could have been a titanic film, but doesn't seem quite comfortable in its own shoes. Although the storyline — a reflection on Anne Lord's (Vanessa Redgrave) life and the mistakes she made, while she lies on her deathbed — offers the opportunity for an outstanding tear-jerker. Instead it's rather morbid.

No doubt the film producers thought they had struck gold with this one, and with the likes of actors Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Hugh Dancy and Redgrave, who could go wrong?

But the screenplay lacks structure, constantly chopping and changing directions. And while you might be taken in by the big names in the cast, many have very minimal roles and don't make much of an appearance — Meryl Streep and Glenn Close being cases in point.

Adapted from the book 'Evening' by Susan Minot, the story swaps between the 1950s and rather boring present day where Anne's hardly lucid. The flashbacks take us to a happy time for young Anne (Claire Danes) — the weekend her best friend Lila gets married, and the weekend she meets the 'only man she ever loved'.

These scenes are the real story; the crisp reinvention of the era is breathtaking, and the characters are exact. The filmmakers would have done well to focus on this rather than the present day, where Anne's two daughters (Toni Collette and Natasha Richardson) bicker at each other, distracting from the story and making it more complex than need be...

If there's one reason to watch the film, it's Hugh Dancy's performance. He portrays Buddy — a minor figure in the book fleshed out here — and plays the flawed brother of Lila precisely. At the end of the film it's him and his tragic story that you're thinking about, and not the main character Anne's...

Special features

The deleted scenes and commentary not only help you understand where the director was trying to go with this film but also why the movie seems incoherent.