MFDB

Storyline

This film covers three periods in time; it focuses on three women and three stories, all of which are interwoven. In a suburb of London in 1923,writer Virginia Woolf battles with depression and with the opening line of her first great novel, “Mrs. Dalloway”. Following a heated argument with her harptongued sister, Vanessa, who describes Virginia as ‘deranged’, Virginia is on the edge of a nervous breakdown.Distraught,she makes her way into town, in spite of her worried husband Leonard’s attempts to dissuade her. Los Angeles in 1952. Housewife Laura Brown is reading “Mrs. Dalloway”. Laura, who is seriously ill, is fighting for a tiny piece of freedom from her domineering war hero husband, who has left her to cope with her illness on her own. Reading Virginia Woolf’s book in secret finally gives Laura the strength to give her life new impetus. New York in the present. Clarissa Vaughan plans to throw a party for a friend who is dying of Aids.There’s not much left of Richard, the once brilliant poet whom Clarissa still loves and who has always mockingly called her “Mrs.Dalloway”. Just like Virginia Woolf’s novel, Clarissa’s day commences with her buying flowers; it ends, just like in the novel, with a suicide.

Festivals & Academy awards and others

Berlin International Film Festival 2003
Competition
Silver bear for the best actress (Meryl Streep / Nicole Kidman / Julianne Moore)
Berliner Morgenpost Readers' Prize