Starring Claire Danes and Vanessa Redgrave. Rated PG.

The blandly titled Evening , a tonally rich yet vaguely unsatisfying piece of literary transformation, offers more Fine Acting than Deep Meaning.

The film is seemingly an odd choice for Hungarian-born director Lajos Koltai's second outing after his debut with the darkly illuminated Fateless two years ago. And yet it was probably assumed that this veteran cinematographer–who did ace lensing for such polished art-house material as Hanussen , Sunshine , and Wrestling Ernest Hemingway –could add the kind of mystical lustre to the tale of a dying mother and her bickering daughters that he brought to Fateless 's child's-eye view of the Holocaust. Again using countryman Gyula Pados ( Basic Instinct 2 ) as his camera chief, Koltai finds all the deluxe corners of a New England seaside set both in the 1950s and in the present.

The occasion of this cinematic time travel is provided by Susan Minot in an adaptation of her novel of the same name, fashioned with novelist-screenwriter Michael Cunningham. Evening strongly resembles Cunningham's work on The Hours , with some of The Bridges of Madison County thrown in for middlebrow measure. Here, the recollections are of ancient Ann Lord, played fearlessly by Vanessa Redgrave as a woman on her deathbed, remembering when she was young, beautiful, and played by Claire Danes.

The film weaves the decades together intriguingly, if not always with conviction, by having the dying Ann murmuring about past-life adventures, which we see illustrated while her squabbling daughters try to figure out what she's on about. These are played by Toni Collette, in typical messed-up mode, and Redgrave's offspring Natasha Richardson, whose face appears to be hardening unnaturally.

Meryl Streep, aged by makeup, shows up for one quite delicately handled sequence, and a younger version of her character, called Lila Wittenborn, is played by Streep's own daughter, the unfortunately named but talented Mamie Gummer. Lila is Ann's dearest friend and primary connection with Newport's aristocratic Wittenborns, including a handsome brother (Hugh Dancy) loaded with charm and whatever booze is currently open. (Their stern matriarch is Glenn Close, no less.) Both siblings are besotted with Harris, a former servant's son who is now a successful doctor–although, as played by so-so Patrick Watson, it's hard to grasp why everyone, including Ann, is willing to drop everything for him.

Many emotions are enacted against windswept landscapes. Of more consequence is the script's view of women as perpetually suffering creatures who simply must make do with the small compensations life hands them. Ann is depicted as a headstrong bohemian in search of a singing career, but the vocals we hear are not good. Is this the cause of her career downfall or just laziness on the part of the filmmakers? Perhaps some screenwriter will one day help unravel this mystery.