The Last Day: A Modern Take on Mrs. Dalloway
The Last Day, a feature film debut by Rachel Rose, is a modern interpretation of Virginia Woolf's classic novel, Mrs. Dalloway. The film uses the framework of a single day in the life of a suburban housewife to explore themes of modern womanhood, identity, and connection. With a steady hand, Rose navigates the complexities of her characters' lives, using a handheld camera to keep us caught in their movements, queasy and intimate in equal measure.
At the center of the film is Alicia Vikander's Julia, a suburban housewife attempting to navigate a very busy Fourth of July. She's got a traveling husband, a growing daughter, and a huge house outside of New York City. She's throwing a big holiday party that night, but before all that, one-time novelist Julia has to head into the city to tick through a lengthy to-do list. Cinematographer Eric Yue stays close on his subjects, a handheld camera keeping us caught in their movements, queasy and intimate in equal measure.
Julia's day is already fraught (in the middle of all of this, she’s also dealing with a deep grief over her recently deceased father), but things only get more complicated as she, phew, handles last-minute Botox, a run-in with the perhaps great love of her life (Wagner Moura), an entirely horrific professional meeting, and a visit to her dad’s old loft. There’s a stop for group therapy. There are flashbacks that help further illuminate her past life. There’s a growing unease as Julia attempts to balance her everyday concerns with deep-seated fears about who she is as a woman, an artist, a wife, a mother, and a person.
Meanwhile, fellow young suburban mother Taylor (Victoria Pedretti) is facing similar problems, simply trying to get through the day while unable to shake profound fears about her very existence. We first meet Taylor in a local bakery as she’s fumbling to pay for some cookies (she’s so out of it that it doesn’t even occur to her to wonder about the whereabouts of her wallet).
Julia is there too, but the women don’t really cross paths until Julia finds Taylor’s wallet in the parking lot, another to-do added to her list. She can’t possibly know what’s really happening with the young mother, who punches an address to a psychiatric hospital into her GPS, before zooming out of the parking lot and in the other direction. (The GPS continues to advise her to make a U-turn. She will not.)
As Taylor heads home to her concerned husband and three young kids (three is a lot, her pediatrician concedes to her during a nerve-jangling visit later in the day), she continues to fray. Flashbacks to her own pre-kid life pull us further in — she used to be a delivery nurse of all things — and Pedretti’s joy and vibrance during these sequences only further highlight how utterly heartbreaking the rest of her performance is. Julia may be struggling to reconcile who she wants to be with who she is, but Taylor has long ago lost any sense of her self.
As Rose’s film follows the pair throughout the day, The Last Day continues to cleverly use the Mrs. Dalloway framework to interrogate questions about modern womanhood. How can Julia and Taylor exist beyond motherhood? Why is it so hard to connect with other women? What does the future look like? What does the past? And why can’t they be happy with what they have?
Vikander approaches these themes with a steady presence, much of her performance just registering across her face (this is a compliment, a scene in which she grapples with professional disappointment and resentment works because we see how hard she’s struggling to hold it together), while Pedretti leans more into a turn that’s so open that it feels almost too intimate to observe. I can’t recall a recent film during which I so desperately wanted to reach in and hug a character.
But, of course, I could not do that. I could recognize the need and the pain and the fear of the women who populate it, but I could not touch it, or change it. I could hear it and feel it. But I could only observe it.
The film's strength lies in its graceful performances and the steady anxiety that they stir up, far more impactful than the showy elements that punctuate the film. While the film is billed as a modern interpretation of Mrs. Dalloway, Rose's script is not fussy when it comes to going one-to-one with her adaptation. She's taken what she needs, ignored the rest, and turned it into a staggeringly smart new spin on classic material.
In my opinion, The Last Day is a thought-provoking exploration of modern womanhood, identity, and connection. It is a must-watch for anyone interested in these themes, and it is a testament to the power of storytelling in film.
