|
Popcorn Reviews
With Cybčle: Mrs. Dalloway
By Cybčle Elaine Werts
CybeleW@aol.com
First published
in the Shelburne News, Shelburne Vermont
Popcorn Rating (4 possible): 3 kernels
for strong and moving performances.
I made my first foray into this work of
Virginia Woolf with little more hope than for another costume
drama riddled with the usual repressed sexuality. I got a double
helping of both as this film is set in the 1920’s with
flashbacks to our heroine’s youth thirty years earlier. Mrs.
Dalloway (Vanessa Redgrave) is going through one day, a stream
of consciousness day if you will, where we see her current life
as well as memories of her youth. Having settled for a safe and
protected marriage, she feels the pangs of a genteel middle age
crisis.
As a spirited girl with a posse of beaus, she
could have chosen love with passionate Peter Walsh (Alan Cox), a
different kind of love with her best friend Sally (Lena Heady),
or protection and familiarity with Richard Dalloway, her
eventual choice. Like Fried Green Tomatoes, the lesbian
side of the story is subtle but unmistakable, and not nearly as
well developed as it should have been. It was clear that Mrs.
Dalloway’s nature leaned toward safety and predictability,
both in her youth and in maturity. That being so, the premise
that she was doubting the choices of her youth is thin. It was
more of a regret that she wasn’t the courageous type. Perhaps
the book was more illuminating.
During that same day as she goes about her
party planning activities, a young man brushes by her life
without ever actually entering it. He is Septimus Warren Smith
(Rupert Graves), a tormented soul who watched another soldier
blow up during World War I. In a moment of desperation he looks
into the flower shop where Mrs. Dalloway is shopping and there
the link between them is made. Past that, viewers will be
somewhat lost on what this parallel narrative is about. Perhaps
it too was clearer in the book, as even my perusals of other
reviewers failed to explain this storyline.
Nevertheless, if the story of Mrs. Dalloway’s
present is staid and conventional, her youth is vivid with love
and pain. That story is the one that spoke to me, and may well
to you too.
Suggested Gustatory Accompaniment: Earl Gray
tea with a spritz of lemon.
Copyright 2000
|
