Inspired by one of Russian writer Anton Chekhov’s best-known plays, The Seagull, Days and Nights is set in rural New England in the 1980s.
The film, written and directed by Christian Camargo in an interesting feature debut, centers around Elizabeth (Allison Janney), a movie star, who brings her paramour Peter (Christian Camargo) to her lakeside estate to visit her family on Memorial Day weekend.
The household includes her ailing brother (William Hurt), her artist son (Ben Whishaw), his ethereal muse (Juliet Rylance), the family doctor (Jean Reno) and the estate’s custodian (Russell Means), the careless caretaker (Michael Nyqvist) and his wife (Cherry Jones), their temperamental daughter (Katie Holmes) and her long suffering ornithologist husband (Mark Rylance).
The matriarch is the keeper of the sacred land where a bald eagle is trying to raise its young. During the weekend, a disastrous turn of events leads the family from dysfunction to heartbreak and, ultimately, salvation.
