Literary indie, not just in source material (a well-regarded novel by Brian Morton) or in talky, articulate, literate treatment, but also in subject matter: a stiff-necked New York Jewish intellectual (he wears a tie when home alone), a drinker at the well of Lionel Trilling, Alfred Kazin, Irving Kristol, et al., struggling to complete his fifth and final novel before his demise, parrying the time-consuming advances of an adoring, auburn-haired grad student who has selected him as the obscure topic of her master's thesis, and who has set herself the difficult goal of getting him back in print. (Subplot: his unmarried daughter and her ticking biological clock.) Small, slow, serious film, not without humor, in spite of the straightness and narrowness (or because of the straightness and narrowness) of Frank Langella's committed performance, his total avoidance of anything like comic loopiness and broadness. Lauren Ambrose and Lili Taylor give him plenty of credible trouble as the chief women in his life, new admirer and aging daughter respectively. With Adrian Lester; directed by Andrew Wagner. (2007) — Duncan Shepherd
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