It’s hard to shake the indulgent premise of Starting Out in the Evening, in which a briefly famous but now aging novelist (Frank Langella) meets a slinky and adoring graduate student (Lauren Ambrose) who wants to write her thesis about him. This is mostly about whether or not the May-December couple gets involved, physically and otherwise. It should come as no surprise to learn that Starting Out is adapted from a novel, which means it’s another example of a writer engaging in fictional wish fulfillment.
