OxfordPress.com

Grade: C-

Verdict: Try not to remember this kind of "September."

Details: Starring Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon and Keeley Hawes. Directed by Deborah Warner. Rated R for brief sexuality and violence. 1 hour, 44 minutes.

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Review: Like the genteel Anglo-Irish country folk it chronicles, "The Last September" is something of a charming mess. Oh, it's well-crafted and elegantly acted, but a mess nonetheless.

Set in rural Ireland in 1920, four years after the Easter Uprising, the movie comes off as a kind of minor-league "Heartbreak House" in which the fates of assorted characters gathered in and around a once-grand manor mirror the political tensions between the Irish rebels and their English rulers.

The Anglo-Irish aristocracy, who make up the country's increasingly irrelevant ruling class, sound British but feel Irish. Or at least Irish enough to be embraced by the little people who run their houses and tend their grounds. But the reality is that they are caught in the middle as the clashes between the Irish Republican Army and the Black and Tans grow bloodier and more frequent.

Sir Richard (Michael Gambon doing Rex Harrison as Captain Shotover) and Lady Myra (Maggie Smith doing Maggie Smith in anything) seem to know they're an endangered species, but they can't quite decide what, if anything, to do about it. So they keep giving tennis parties and having tea and welcoming guests like the knowing Marda (Fiona Shaw), a woman with a history, and a wandering, well-bred couple (Lambert Wilson and Jane Birkin) whose general unhappiness is compounded by the fact that the husband was once part of Marda's history.

The movie's true center, however, is Sir Richard's lively and flirtatious niece, Lois (Keeley Hawes), who manages to become involved with both an upright British soldier (David Tenant) and a sexy Irish rebel (Gary Lydon). Symbolic perhaps? You bet.

The autumnal title is meant to suggest a Chekhovian tone, but the film is simultaneously too meandering and too obvious to pull it off. Well-known theatrical director Deborah Warner, here making her feature film debut, seems uncertain of how to pull all the elements together. The movie looks wonderful, and she wisely stays out of her blue-ribbon cast's way. But the film moves in fits and starts, so that we're often amused by the characters but never emotionally connected to them. And that would seem to be crucial to a picture about an entire world disappearing with neither a bang nor a whimper, but a kind of well-mannered resignation.

"The Last September" certainly isn't a chore to sit through. Some of the dialogue is archly memorable (Lady Myra on a guest: "He's very intellectual, but he does play tennis"). Plus, there's an inherent interest in the material itself. But afterward you feel as if you've been to a pleasant but entirely forgettable lawn party.

— Eleanor Ringel, Cox News Service