This 'Seagull' takes wobbly flight

A so-so adaptation of a Chekhov play.

The Seagull, a filmed version of Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov's 1896 play has a bumpy beginning, so much so that Chekov's language sounds a bit too contemporary, even a little trite. In the hands of director Michael Mayer, it takes some time for Chekhov's drama about a group of unhappy, self-absorbed people to find its rhythm, but it eventually does. Annette Bening plays the signature role of Irina Arkadina, an aging actress who has taken to the country with her new lover, the writer Boris Trigoren (Corey Stoll). Irina's son (Billy Howle) fancies himself a writer but has yet to establish himself in ways that allow him to be taken seriously. A fine cast also includes Saoirse Ronan as Nina, the play's aspiring actress and naive innocent; and Elizabeth Moss, as the perpetually embittered Masha. Masha always wears black because, she says, the color matches her life. Mayer's adaptation works in fits and starts, but if you're interested in the way a new group of actors approach important theatrical roles, Seagull is worth seeing for Bening's warbled, agitated Irina and, even more so, for Stoll's Trigoren, a writer whose understated personal ambitions can be alarming. Mayer's rendition of the first in a quartet of Chekhov's great plays that continued with Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard preserves enough of Chekhov’s thematic intensity to to avoid disaster. No one who tackles Chekhov entirely can miss the troubled nature of characters whose momentous concerns often seem like overwrought preoccupations. How grand we all are in our embrace of the fleeting and the trivial.

A marriage not made in heaven

On Chisel Beach shows the life-altering consequences of a single evening.

Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle are exceptionally good in theater director Dominic Cooke's On Chesil Beach, an adaptation of a novel by Ian McEwan, who also wrote the movie's screenplay.

The movie tells the story of awkward newlyweds trying to navigate the shoals of sex on their honeymoon by the sea, a situation that gives McEwan an opportunity to explore the sad consequences of attitudes that prevailed in the pre-sexual revolution days of the early 1960s.

On the surface, both Florence Ponting and Edward Mayhew are promising young people. She's a classical violinist with a bright future as a professional musician. A smart history student, Edward hails from a less sophisticated background than Florence. He's more of a rock n' roll guy, but he falls hard for Florence, he did well in college and he seems in possession of a good spirit.

Scenes in the newlywed's hotel room at Chesil Beach in Dorset are interrupted by flashbacks that show the lively courtship between Florine and Edward and their sometimes uneasy introductions to each other's families.

Florence's father (Samuel West) follows a strictly business ethos, even on the tennis court. Her mother (Emily Watson) teaches at Oxford. Poor Edward is supposed to join the Ponting family business, a prospect with about as much appeal as a stint in solitary.

Edward's father (Adrian Scarborough) seems like one of those nice but ineffectual men who has spent his life trying hard without getting a grip on much of anything. Edward's mother (Anne-Marie Duff), a woman who suffered brain damage as the result of an accident, presents a particular challenge. She unselfconsciously wanders about in the nude, unmoored from ordinary restraints.

Not surprisingly, Florence and Edward's wedding night turns into a nightmare: Edward is fumbling but aggressive; Florence finds the idea of sex a bit repellant. Both are virgins.

After an unsuccessful attempt to consummate the marriage, Florence and Edward wind up on the desolate, rocky Dorset beach where it becomes clear that an impatient Edward can't transcend his ideas about marriage. Florence seems the more sensitive of the two but more than a bit unrealistic.

In its final going, the movie skips ahead to show us (perhaps ill-advisedly) what happened to Florence and Edward at various points after their fateful day at the beach.

The movie's emotions derive from Edward's regret. Thematically, we're probably meant to conclude that had these two come of age in the 1970s rather than the 1950s, their lives might have been entirely different. As it stands, Florence and Edward are young people whose lives are shaped by their inability to deal with intimacy -- either emotional or physical.

In all, On Chisel Beach is a well-acted movie that feels more slender than it probably should, neither an insular chamber piece nor a full-blown look at crippling sexual mores. It's not easy to think expansively about a movie that tries to make an awful lot out of one wretched night.