Review of Starting Out in the Evening (2007) by Rene S — 16 Nov 2008

I really considered giving this at the very least another half-star but then I remembered how arduous the first half of the film was. Don't get me wrong though. The movie has plenty going for it, especially in Frank Langella, but there seemed to be flaws in the movie's overall construction.

While the principles of the movie and the characters were extremely admirable, even chivalrous, there was a sense that the content was much too steeped in its own intellectualism for its own good. Which is unfortunate because I typically love movies about writers.

Hardly cliché, the movie ends on a great note and the one good thing going about Wagner's debut as director was the way he refrained from getting overly artsy-fartsy about the style--he simply relates us a story of great emotion without getting too sentimental or complicated for the sake of its own ego.