(rated PG-13, 120 mins.)
Based on Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, a delicate three-part novel about the last days of Virginia Woolf’s life encapsulated into a movie that weaves three different women and one day (the hours) in their lives. “Mrs. Dalloway” was Woolf’s fourth novel about an upper class Englishwoman married to a man who she intends to throw a big social party for. Paralleling this story is the story of a character, a poet and a writer. The character is Julie Anne Moore a housewife reading “Mrs. Dalloway” in post WWII Los Angeles trying to get her own husband’s birthday party right. The poet is Meryl Streep, a modern day Mrs. Dalloway preparing a party with the help of her daughter (Claire Danes) for a friend (Ed Harris) dying of AIDS. The writer is Nicole Kidman playing Virginia Woolf in turn of the century England, composing the classic book while battling bouts of depression and finally suicide. The acting is superb – Streep is at home again in a NY writer roles post “Adaptation’. Moore too seems familiar as the homey housewife the same role as her recent “Far From Heaven”. Kidman is barely recognizable with shapeless wardrobe, prosthetic nose and drugged version of British accent – all the components for Oscar nomination, but the story moves slowly. It seems the pace is equivalent to the pace it would take these three generations of women to get there. The slow message is that every woman has her own set of demons usually taking place right in her own kitchen while cake baking. And every woman can experience life’s traumas all in the course of one day, or hours.
