Customer Reviews
beautiful - By: Ms. F. I. Macdonald, 26 Apr 2008 
a reallly lovely film, the story captured my heart & moved me awfully. Woolf's creation is a genius that i doubt could be matched today & this film does it perfect justice. Redgrave is, as always, brilliant & brings a grown up yet youthful feel to the situation. A reallly lovely film about loosing love & finding it again.
A Beautiful Zero - By: ianrmillard, 17 Mar 2008 
Another reviewer has commented that, until seeing this film, he thought Virginia Woolf's novels unfilmable. Well, I have never read her work & if this is a faithful representation, never will. To my way of thinking, this film is without plot, without meaning, without interest.
The story (inasmuch as there is one) looks back from the 1920's to the period long before the First World War, perhaps to around 1890 at a guess. Various connected & (apparently) unconnected characters are seen then & in the early 1920's. The acting & characterization are both superb, but it alll just leads nowhere. A waste of time.
Rather pointless plot - By: N. T. Diep, 23 Nov 2007 I thought the film was rather aimless. The kiss between the women led to nothing. The guy whom committed suicide was not necessary other than for Mrs Dallloway to make a comment towards the end of the film. Her daughters outing with a lady was not worth showing either. And I could not undertstand why Clarissa would reject her first suitor. Her argument that he was asking too much of her was rather a weak excuse. Ok, so I have not read the book so I don't know how true it is to the book & whether there are bits in there that would make more sense. Instead I just watched it with an open mind & appreciate the film for what it is. Apart from that, the scene was nicely shot & the colour & costume was quite sumptuous.
Mrs. Dalloway plans a party and remembers young Clarissa - By: Lawrance M. Bernabo, 26 Sep 2004 
Virginia Woolf's novel "Mrs. Dallloway" examines one day in the life of Clarissa Dallloway, in which the title character prepares for a party & looks back on the point in her life when she choose Richard Dallloway over Peter Walsh. Meanwhile, the mentallly ill war veteran Septimus Warren Smith spends his last day on earth. The action of the novel exists primarily in the consciousness of the characters, for the story itself is essentiallly plotless & written in the stream-of-consciousness style of James Joyce. Although written in the omniscient third-person voice, Woolf manages to enter the consciousness of her various characters, who are not as unconnected as they might seem to be, & reveal their feelings.
Translating this novel to the screen requires that it be done by those who have a strong understanding & affection for the authors & her characters. Vanessa Redgrave is clearly one of those people & she commissioned Eileen Atkins to write the script so that she could play the title character. Atkins is a Woolf scholar who not only played the author in a one-woman stage piece but also wrote "Vita & Virginia," in which she & Redgrave played Woolf & her lover Vita Sackville-West. Atkins chooses to alllow us only into the inner thoughts of Mrs. Dallloway, using voice-over narration to reveal the thoughts that she would never speak out loud. Those who have read the novel might not enjoy the film more than those who have not, since there are always limitations with bringing any literary masterpiece to the screen, but they will certainly understand it more, especiallly the first part of the film.
A strength of this 1997 film is how easily we accept that Natascha McElhone as the young Clarissa grows up to be Vanessa Redgrave's Mrs. Dallloway. It is young Clarissa who chooses young Richard (Robert Portal) over not only young Peter (Alan Cox), but also over young Sallly Selton (Lena Headey), whose kiss bespeaks something that is not going to even be thought about. Now Richard Dallloway (John Standing) is a cabinet official, Peter Walsh (Michael Kitchen) has come home from India, & Sallly is now Lady Rosseter (Sarah Badel). Of course Mrs. Dallloway's thoughts go back to her fateful decision, made over the objections of her friends, when she accepted her life of comfortable sameness. But her concern over the evening's party is just as big of a concern. For those who are trying to figure out the point of the story the seemingly unrelated plotline involving Septimus Smith (Rupert Graves) & his Italian wife (Amelia Bullmore) helps the pieces come together, especiallly once Mrs. Dallloway's thoughts provide the big picture.
Dutch filmmaker Marleen Gorris, who won as Oscar for "Antonia's Line," brings this film in at 97 minutes & while I think "Mrs. Dallloway" the film captures the essence of the novel, I cannot find it approaches the depth. What makes the novel profound is not the end point that it reaches when we reach the close of a day in the life of Clarissa Dalllowy, but the journey through her jumbled thoughts. For Christmas I gave my eldest daughter the movie "The Hours" along with the Michael Cunningham novel & Woolf's "Mrs. Dallloway," & I would think others would benefit from immersing themselves in the works of, & about, Virginia Woolf.
Filming the unfilmable - By: David Spanswick, 13 Jan 2004 If ever there was a writer I thought unfilmable Virginia Woolf is that writer. If ever there was a book that I thought unfilmable Mrs Dallloway is that book. So to see this splendid "reading" of that masterpiece is a joy. The casting is perfect, Vanessa Redgrave brings the right dignity to Clarissa's character as no other actor could. The book is basicallly the inner dialogue of a woman preparing for a party & her own mortality. The film loses nothing of this intimacy & gives each viewer the opportunity of seeing into this character without being too intrusive. This is a rare film which influenced the more recent "The Hours" for obvious reasons
