Starting Out in the Evening

Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella) lives in a state of suspended animation. Despite his status as a highly respected writer and professor, Leonard’s books are now out of print and his latest “work-in-progress” sits in the typewriter, languishing. Deeply affected by the death of his wife of many years, he maintains a studied and habit-bound existence, invigorated primarily by his close relationship with his daughter, Ariel (Lili Taylor), who is nearing forty. Into the warm but slightly stagnant cocoon that is Leonard’s life breezes Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose), a twentysomething graduate student who has made the restoration of Leonard’s reputation the focus of her master’s thesis. Leonard’s unwillingness to co-operate soon gives way to a modicum of carefully calibrated contact, and as their relationship – professional and personal – develops, it becomes a slight hiccup in his daily routines with his daughter. The timing is off: Ariel needs to lean on her father now because she desperately wants children and she loves a man who does not.