Natasha Richardson plays a daughter, Vanessa Redgrave (Richardson's mother) her dying parent, in "Evening."

Watching a movie based on a familiar book can be bewildering, even distracting, when pivotal characters are purged, key plot points bypassed and settings and themes blithely cast off in the name of brevity or the filmmaker's Holy Grail, "narrative flow."

If you've not read Susan Minot's 1998 bestseller "Evening," you will be happily oblivious to the movie's glaring departures and free to settle into this languid, gorgeously shot film, which bears only a passing resemblance to the novel. Certainly, longtime fans of the book can, and probably will, enjoy the celluloid version, as long as they can leave expectations of absolute fidelity at the popcorn counter.

Minot, who collaborated with director Bernardo Bertolucci on the screenplay for 1996's "Stealing Beauty," shares writing credit here with "Hours" author Michael Cunningham, and his fingerprints are all over this movie. Where the novel, which traces the final months of a dying woman's life, and her feverish memories of a lost love, had a dreamy quality and was often liberated from the constraints of punctuation, the movie's trajectory is that of a far more traditional--albeit gloomy--love story.

That's a good thing, as an earthbound narrative gives the film's laundry list of great actors (which includes Glenn Close, Claire Danes and Vanessa Redgrave) a solid story line and brisk dialogue to sink their teeth into, which they all do with gusto. Danes plays the young Ann Grant, who travels to her best friend's society wedding and falls irrevocably in love with fellow guest Harris Arden (Patrick Wilson, all clench-jawed WASP reserve). Years later, Ann is dying, and her pain-addled brain won't let go of that one fateful weekend. Redgrave, in fine, acerbic form, plays the elderly Ann, and her raw, intensely vulnerable performance is a perfect counterpoint to the intelligence and youthful swagger Danes brings to her role.

Toni Colette and Natasha Richardson (Redgrave's real-life daughter) play Ann's children, struggling painfully to understand their mother's past even as they prepare to let her go. In another neat casting trick, Ann's newly married friend is played by Mamie Gummer in the flashback scenes, and later by Gummer's mother, the impeccably restrained Meryl Streep.

Director Lajos Koltai also helmed 2006's haunting Holocaust parable "Fateless," and with "Evening" once again demonstrates his particular ability to infuse spectacular beauty into moments of great suffering, without ever compromising the emotional power of a scene. Speaking of which, "Evening," which covers all the Big Issues (life and death, love and loss), could be a big sentimental mess. Happily, Minot and Cunningham's creative interpretation of the novel hews close to the original in one way, at least: The film, like the book, is clear-eyed without being clinical, reflective but never maudlin.

Get showtimes and movie details for "Evening."