Now aging and ailing, the one-time celebrated author Leonard Schiller has been forgotten by his readers, literary colleagues, and critics during the decade he has struggled to complete what he knows will be his final novel.

When the brash, ambitious Brown University graduate student Heather Wolfe approaches him with a request for access to his thoughts and recollections for the Master's thesis she hopes will reintroduce the public to his work, he initially refuses to cooperate.

When he learns about her plan, she ends their relationship; at the same time, Ariel's former lover Casey Davis returns to New York City after a five-year absence.

The film focuses on these four individuals and their evolution as they are thrust out of their comfort zones and into arenas that force them to examine their lives and decide how much they are willing to compromise and sacrifice their own desires in order to accommodate the demands of others.

But in their place is the marvelous fact of Mr. Langella, who carries every nuance of Leonard’s experience — including his prodigious, obsessive reading — in his posture and his pores .

"[6] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said the original novel's appeal was in "the simple but elegant prose and in the way Morton lets us see into the thought processes of his characters.

Starting Out in the Evening has the feeling of a film in which the actors, left to direct themselves, played into their own self-indulgent instincts, and the only one who resisted was the old pro who knew better.

"[7] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called the film "remarkable" and said "Langella delivers a master class in acting [with a] deeply felt portrait of a lion in winter.

"[8] Meghan Keane of The New York Sun stated, "The glowing accolades that the filmmakers attempt to bestow on the novelist Brian Morton ultimately result in an undercooked product .