Mrs Dalloway is a 1997 British drama film, a co-production by the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Netherlands, directed by Marleen Gorris and stars Vanessa Redgrave, Natascha McElhone and Michael Kitchen.
Based on the 1925 novel by Virginia Woolf, and moving continually between the present and the past that is in the characters' heads, it covers a day in the life of Mrs Dalloway, wife of a prosperous politician in London.
Plot
On a beautiful morning in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway sets out from her large house in Westminster to choose the flowers for a party she is holding that evening. Her teenage daughter Elizabeth is unsympathetic, preferring the company of the evangelical Miss Kilman. A passionate old suitor, Peter Walsh, turns up and does not disguise the mess he has made of his career and his love life. For Clarissa this confirms her choice in preferring the unexciting but affectionate and dependable Richard Dalloway. At her party Sally turns up, who was her closest friend, so close they kissed on the lips, but is now wife of a self-made millionaire and mother of five.
Intercut with Clarissa's present and past is the story of another couple. Septimus was a decorated officer in the First World War but is now collapsing under the strain of delayed shell-shock, in which he is paralysed by horrible flashbacks and consumed with guilt over the death of his closest comrade. His wife Rezia tries to get him psychiatric help but the doctors she consults are little use: when one commits him to a mental hospital, he jumps from a window to his death. The doctor turns up late at Clarissa's party, apologising because he had to attend to a patient's suicide. Clarissa stands by a window and ponders what it would mean to jump.
Cast
Vanessa Redgrave – Mrs Clarissa Dalloway
Natascha McElhone – Young Clarissa
Michael Kitchen – Peter Walsh
Alan Cox – Young Peter
Sarah Badel – Lady Rosseter
Lena Headey – Young Sally
John Standing – Richard Dalloway
Robert Portal – Young Richard
Oliver Ford Davies – Hugh Whitbread
Hal Cruttenden – Young Hugh
Rupert Graves – Septimus Warren Smith
Amelia Bullmore – Rezia Warren Smith
Margaret Tyzack – Lady Bruton
Robert Hardy – Sir William Bradshaw
Richenda Carey – Lady Bradshaw
Katie Carr – Elizabeth Dalloway
Selina Cadell – Miss Kilman
Amanda Drew – Lucy
Phyllis Calvert – Aunt Helena
Reception
The film grossed £200,892 ($0.3 million) in the United Kingdom. In the United States and Canada, it grossed $3,309,421. Mrs Dalloway received positive reviews from critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 71% based on 34 reviews.