The 2002 film version of Michael Cunningham’s Virginia Woolf homage “The Hours” was replete with the sort of roles that actresses are always complaining they can never get. Mr. Cunningham’s ode to selfishness went on to earn nine Academy Award nominations and a Best Actress win for Nicole Kidman.

Five years later, Focus Features has combined Mr. Cunningham’s award-generating writing skills with Susan Minot’s novel “Evening,” a daunting intergenerational cast of talented actresses, and director Lajos Koltai (most recently of the Holocaust story “Fateless”) seems a surefire combination. But despite the intriguing roles for women of a certain age and a number of nuanced performances, the film version of “Evening” fails to capitalize on the sum of its parts.

Ms. Minot’s novel is a study in subtlety, not something easily adapted to the screen. On the eve of her death, Ann Lord (Vanessa Redgrave) slips in and out of consciousness, reliving episodes in her life, especially a tryst with Harris Arden (Patrick Wilson), the man whom she still ranks as the love of her life. In weaving the text between Ann’s eminent death from cancer and various flashbacks from her life, Ms. Minot’s novel managed to capture the final moments of a woman reassessing her life and preparing for death.

Turning that project into a feature-length film presents more than a few challenges. Ms. Minot tried to adapt the work to the screen numerous times before pairing with producer Jeffrey Sharp (“Boys Don’t Cry,” “Proof”) and entrusting final screen-writing duties to Mr. Cunningham, whose imprint is obvious throughout the film. Aside from trimming down many of the characters — a frequent Hollywood necessity — he plays up the classist angst and adds a gay undercurrent to the story.

Ms. Minot, who does get a screenplay credit on the film, has an understated gift for depicting the trappings of wealthy wasps, but Mr. Cunningham pits his protagonist against the supposedly repressed patrician class. Disdain for the beautiful moneyed set is tempered by an adulation of beautiful bohemians, but the distinction is subtle at best and rendered meaningless by the end.

When a young Ann (Claire Danes) arrives at the estate of her best friend to take her place as maid of honor in Lila’s (Mamie Gummer) wedding, the festivities are on the verge of collapse. Lila’s brother Buddy (Hugh Dancy), perpetually impressed with Ann, is convinced that Lila is making a mistake and only Ann can help her come to her senses. But Lila is determined to marry the dependable Carl Ross (Timothy Kiefer), despite her feelings for the elusive Harris Arden. Ann takes the moral high ground, entreating Lila to follow her heart, but Lila responds instead to her sense of duty — which leaves Ann free to embark on an affair with the young doctor herself. When Ann learns too late that Buddy’s feelings for her also extend to Harris, tragic events have already been set in motion.

Years later, it is Harris — and not the men she subsequently married — on whom the dying Ann is fixated. Fading in and out of consciousness, she recounts the events of this fated weekend while her grown-up, confused daughters try to comprehend all the things about their mother they’ve never known. Ann cryptically refers to her “first mistake” and moans Harris’s name while Nina (Toni Collette) and Constance (Natasha Richardson) look on, perplexed.

Where Ms. Minot’s novel delicately weaved a dying woman’s last days with her reminiscences of her life, the film’s attempts to re-create that intricate web are clunky and, ultimately, disappointing.

“Evening” opens with Ms. Redgrave in a blowing sequin gown on a cliff overlooking Ms. Danes (her younger self) picaresquely sleeping on a sailboat as Mr. Wilson materializes by her side. The scene is overly theatrical, a reminder of how irritating it is to hear other people’s dreams retold. Once the film hits its stride, the love story between Ms. Danes and Mr. Wilson is compelling, but it is hard to recover from the stilted scenes that are continually tossed out.

It is not until the end that “Evening” truly finds its footing. As Ann struggles to take inventory of her life and decide what her mistakes have cost, Meryl Streep appears as the aged Lila to complete the picture. She comes into Ann’s sick room and the two stated actresses share a moment of reckoning and closure.

Watching Ms. Streep and Ms. Redgrave coil themselves around the scene is pure magic. But it sets the rest of the film in stark relief. Ms. Gummer and Ms. Danes are adept in their roles as the pair in younger years, but the women seem mere acquaintances then.

Ms. Gummer deftly paints Lila as a privileged young woman hoping to avoid the pitfalls of adulthood by jumping from her parents’ home into life with a boring but dependable man. But when Ms. Gummer’s real-life mother (the two share an uncanny resemblance) materializes as her aged self, she is a wizened angel come to see off her friend and pacify Ann’s daughters. Ms. Streep brings with her the gravitas the film was struggling for all along.

In the end, it seems the wasp retreat from emotion served her well. The aged Lila tells Nina and Constance: “At the end, so much of it turns out not to matter.”

It is a perplexing moral, but justifies the lives of these two women, who were beginning to feel like leftovers in their mother’s life. Ms. Streep almost succeeds in setting everything right again. Indeed, if the final scenes could override everything that came before, “Evening” would be a great film.

mkeane@nysun.com