Friends, family, sailboats, white porches with wicker chairs, bridesmaids in crowns of flowers, Studebakers, dashing young men in tuxedoes with corsages, and sprawling green lawns atop cliffs overlooking the blue ocean. These are the remembered reveries of a few days in 1954 by Ann Lord (Vanessa Redgrave), a woman looking back on her life as she now approaches death.
Acclaimed Hungarian cinematographer-turned-director Lajos Koltai (Fateless) masterfully renders these memories with a saturated palette and rich textures. Claire Danes is the young Ann, a friend of Lila Wittenborn (Mamie Gummer) who travels to Newport, Rhode Island, to attend Lila's wedding to Karl Ross (Timothy Kiefer), a man deemed a fitting partner but who Lila is unsure she loves. Ann, a free spirit with a Bohemian sense of style, is a little unsure of her footing in the rarified air that pervades the Wittenborns' "summer cottage" and is immediately drawn to Harris (Patrick Wilson), the doctor son of a former family servant.
Danes seems skittish as part of this dream cast of female actors with interwoven family connections. The film features real-life mother and daughter Redgrave and Natasha Richardson, while Meryl Streep makes a brief appearance at older Ann's bedside as the elder incarnation of Lila, the character played as a youth by Streep's real-life daughter Gummer. Glenn Close (seemingly reprising her role as part of a privileged Newport clan from The World According to Garp) appears as Lila's mother.
In a film with such acting pedigree and genetic bonds, why is the audience held at arm's length, unable to penetrate the film's hard, shimmering veneer?
VIEW FILM STILLS: Evening
READ MORE: Mamie Gummer interview
