‘Evening’

Sometimes the magic happens. And sometimes, even with all the elements in place, the spell just doesn't take.

Such a case, alas, is "Evening," which tries desperately -- in its restrained, genteel way -- to evoke the most ephemeral of emotions, only to vacillate between who-cares reserve (most of the time) and melodramatic overkill (in a fortunately few, but still too many instances).

Based on Susan Minot's novel, adapted by Minot and fellow author Michael Cunningham ("The Hours"), the drama centers on Ann (Vanessa Redgrave), who's at home, dying of cancer, drifting between painful reality and dreamy recollections of her past.

Neither of her daughters, surly screw-up Nina (played by Toni Collette) and dutiful good girl Constance (Redgrave's own daughter, Natasha Richardson), know who mom's talking about when she whispers the name "Harris."

But "Evening" shows us -- and, by the time we find out, we don't much care.

Harris, we learn, is the man who got away -- long ago and far away, back in the Eisenhower era, when Ann (played in her youth by Claire Danes), an aspiring jazz singer with appropriately bohemian impulses, served as the maid of honor for her college friend Lila (Mamie Gummer, Meryl Streep's look-alike daughter) at a palatial New England estate.

Lila's about to marry someone just like her: rich and well-born. Someone who meets the standards of her oh-so-proper parents (Barry Bostwick, Glenn Close). Someone decidedly unlike Lila's dreamy, doomed charmer of a brother (Hugh Dancy).

And someone definitely not like Harris (Patrick Wilson), the noble son of the family's former housekeeper, who grew up and went to war in Korea, came back and became a doctor, then returned to his working-class hometown to tend to the less blessed.

Hungarian cinematographer-turned-director Lajos Koltai, making his English-language debut, approaches this tangle of desire, regret, resignation and acceptance the same way Minot and Cunningham do: with earnest, methodical artistry that leads to the kind of well-meaning artificiality no one could ever possibly mistake for real life as lived by actual human beings.

Then again, it's always a pleasure -- and often much more than that -- to watch an acting legend like Redgrave regardless of setting. (Although how the coltish Claire Danes grew up to be the regally possessed Redgrave represents movie genetics at its most howlingly unbelievable.)

"Evening" finally captures a magic moment when our very own acting royalty, Meryl Streep -- in old-lady makeup as the aged Lila -- shows up to visit her dying friend. Watching these giants adjusting to each other's rhythms, voices and spirits does indeed conjure magic.

By then, however, the sun has long since set on "Evening" -- and it's too late for the spell cast by Redgrave and Streep to take effect.