According to my research on the internet, where everything seems plausible-ish, the earliest citation of the now-ubiquitous phrase "chick flick" was 15 years ago, defined by a Chicago film critic as "those movies to which women travel in droves armed with only a fresh box of Kleenex and a burning desire to cry their eyes red." But as insulting as the term might be to females and baby birds (and especially baby girl birds), can we please just appreciate that it is both rhymey and true? It's actually only offensive when the film is as well, like if someone were to - oh, I don't know - dumb down a rich literary tearjerker using a heap of our greatest actors and siphon nearly all the soul from it.

The opening scenes of Oscar-nominated director Lajos Koltai's "Evening" suggest the frosty fire of a Maxfield Parrish dusk, but it soon becomes clear that it is, in fact, the beautiful delusions of a dying woman. Vanessa Redgrave capably portrays Ann, inching toward eternal peace with her bickering daughters and the enigmatic night nurse (the great Eileen Atkins, "Cold Mountain") close at hand. Ann's morphine dreams provide the basis for much of "Evening" as she flashes decades back, in and out of consciousness, to the one(-night stand) that got away.

Young Ann is played by Claire Danes, and it's during preparations for the elegant Newport wedding of her privileged friend Lila (Mamie Gummer, "The Hoax") that the bohemian Ann sparks with Dr. Harris Arden (Patrick Wilson, "Little Children"). But movie bluebloods are rarely content, which means that unhappy bride Lila is also in love with Harris, as is, possibly, Lila's black-sheep brother Buddy (Hugh Dancy, "King Arthur"), though he is definitely enamored of former school chum Ann. This love rhombus takes as many as zero shocking turns, with drunken declarations and kisses on the sly all voided by the tragic heartbreak narcotically hinted at by present-day Ann.

Meanwhile, back at the deathbed, Ann's girls are at odds over their chosen lifestyles, each representing the two sides of Ann. Restless Nina (the always excellent Toni Collette) is the vaguely dissatisfied artist, while focused Constance (Redgrave's daughter Natasha Richardson) has a family and a career. Theoretically we're supposed to write off Ann and invest ourselves in Nina and Constance, but the dying parent plot device is a tricky one, as it's tough to elicit sympathy for squabbling siblings having it out as their mother clings to life upstairs. And then adult Lila shows up in the wrinkle-sprinkled form of Gummer's classy real-life mom, Meryl Streep, and fastens a clichéd bow to our tidy little package.

The tremendous cast is absolutely not at fault for the flaws of "Evening" (nor is the luscious seaside cinematography that would make a postcard jealous). Danes has abandoned the meek twitches that once made her so annoying and turns in a graceful performance as a young woman hoping to blaze her own trail. She almost persuades us that there's something appealing about Harris, but the uninspiring Wilson only makes the eloquent Dancy appear more intense as he puts the "art" in "martyr." The scene-stealer here, though, is the gifted Gummer as Lila, her pretty pie face devoid of her mother's aloof cheekbones but blessed with the same powerful tear ducts.

Blame for the unfortunate misfire that is "Evening" falls squarely in the laps of Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham and Susan Minot, who based their frustratingly distant screenplay on her 1999 novel. Playwright David Hare adapted Cunningham's similarly time-tweaking "The Hours" for the screen, but Cunningham himself turned his "A Home At the End of the World" into an embarrassing script, which, like "Evening," features a lovely and sexually confused boy plagued by troubled women railing against what's expected of them. Their incomplete and patronizing (aw, poor little ladies and their lady problems!) view of female uncertainty might be summed up by this line: "We are mysterious creatures, aren't we?" muses Lila to Nina.

Perhaps, but "Evening" doesn't begin to scratch the surface (we never understand what drove Ann and Harris apart). In real life we bury secrets on purpose. We willfully make the wrong choices. And damned if much of our torment isn't largely self-induced. A proper chick flick should find sincerity, humor, and hopefully some accountability in our baffling actions, and a proper chick flick ought to have made me weep buckets. I didn't carefully (and more than a little gleefully, if I'm being honest) stack all those tissues on my thigh for fun, you know.

"Evening" (PG-13), directed by Lajos Koltai, opens at area theaters on Friday, June 29.