At The Movies
Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Not the filmmakers behind "Mrs. Dalloway."
DAVID ELLIOTT
Special to The Jewish News
M
rs. Dalloway, playing
this weekend at the
DIA's Detroit Film
Theatre, comes near to
perfection in filming Virginia Woolf's
novel— close enough to possibly start
a spree of Woolf films, to follow the
boomlets for E.M. Forster, Henry
James and Jane Austen.
Vanessa Redgrave was not afraid of
Virginia Woolf, nor was director
Marleen Gorris nor adapter Eileen
Atkins (who did a play on Woolf with
Redgrave). Nor should any viewer be,
even if you have not read the book.
Superbly planted in the London of
the early 1920s, in a Britain still dazed
from World War I yet trying to pre-
tend that comfortable, pre-war cer-
tainties endure, Mrs. Dalloway is a
period piece-plus. The plus is the
almost seamless web of feelings,
maybe the best in this line of stitchery
since John Huston filmed Joyce's The
Dead.
Redgrave is, of course, Mrs.
Dalloway, married to Richard (John
Stanley), a much-liked political figure
without a killer instinct for power.
He's a decent, loyal man, who matures
into genteel wisdom.
Clarissa Dalloway, being of the
upper crust irreversibly, and scared of
bold living, opted for a life of safe
anchorage in family and society. She
radiates at her parties, where she is the
perfect hostess.
Now into serious aging, but lovely
in the Redgrave manner — this infal-
lible performer very rarely falls into a
glazed stance of Great Lady of Acting
— Clarissa suffers a nibbling soul cri-
sis. As she frets about another party,
another dream of "a wonderful
evening," her past nags her, and her
ruminating inner self (heard in voice-
overs) takes us back to her Victorian
youth.
Then, she was a queen of hearts far
before Diana, and is acted by garden-
fresh Natascha McElhone, more
robustly boned than Redgrave, but
close enough. She is courted by the
emotional Peter (Alan Cox), who
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1998
100
wants her to join him in an adventur-
ous life abroad. She holds back. All
the warmth she feels for him, for his
boyish sulks and headlong desire, can-
not overcome her need for assurance
(Is she shallow? Almost, but not real-
ly).
Clarissa falls into the orbit of
Richard Dalloway, who is handsome,
rich, moving on a level path to high
station, but not glory. Only with her
life-keen, "radical" friend Sally (Lena
Headey) can Clarissa let some of her
hair down. Her most sensual memory
is of Sally's impetuous kiss, less a bond
than a spark, with unspoken implica-
tions.
Intercutting the two periods and
sets of actors, in a London of lawns
and luxury, the story includes a streak
of pain: the war veteran Septimus,
played as a man falling apart by
Rupert Graves. Suffering "delayed
shell shock" (the diagnosis comes from
bluff, honest Robert Hardy as Dr.
Bradshaw), supported by his desperate
Italian wife (Amelia Bullmore),
Septimus is the ruined chalice of all
quite a film. Mrs. Dalloway, all
English all the time, is a movie not
just for nostalgia or display, but a film
that plumbs its heart in searching
increments.
It cherishes the creamy crust of a
fading, partly false civilization, while
nudging in bits that verge on satire.
The classy speech and manners dis-
tantly murmur of Monty Pythons to
come. But there is more affection
here, even for some of the stuffy fools.
Michael Kitchen is so very fine as
the aging, still emotionally churning
Peter, back from India, not a success,
embroiled in an affair. He must come
to the party for a reckoning of sorts,
to see that Clarissa was never his to
have, yet feels love for him and that he
is still haunted by her beyond all
refuge of reason or regret.
The film was directed (Gorris),
adapted (Atkins), photographed (Sue
Gibson) and music-fitted (Ilona
Sekacz) by women, but its smart femi-
nism remains embedded in the time of
the story. Gorris puts her actors in the
right rooms and costumes, and
beyond that she knows how to let
moments build, and lines sting the air
and silences resound.
She only bungles at a party cli-
max of rushed feelings, with too many
ramming close-ups. It's odd, as if a
Sergio Leone Western had ambushed
her taste.
That aberration aside, based on
very real art, and loyal to it, Mrs.
Dalloway does not moon after movie
artistry. Its high craft, surely
employed, serves the art of Virginia
Woolf. About time. Rated PG-13.
****
Vanessa
Redgrave stars
as Ckirissa
Dalloway in
"Mrs.
Dalloway."
O
4%
*. lirit
the young Englishmen who found hell
in the war. Now they do not fit in
back home, not in the Dalloway
world.
The wispy lines of story weave into
0
Didi Conn:
"Hopelessly
Devoted" to
"Grease.
ALAN ABRAMS
Special to the Jewish News
T
he almost-musical lilt of her
Brooklyn inflections makes
actress Didi Conn's voice one
of the most recognizable in
show business. Those unmistakable
vocal sounds wafted toward me over a -----`
table at Detroit's Opus One earlier this
month.
What was Conn doing in Motown?
She was out promoting Paramount
Pictures' rerelease of a new and
improved 20th anniversary edition of
Grease, which opens in theaters today
and in which Conn portrays Frenchy,
the "Beauty School Dropout." ____/
Although Grease is a staple of cable '--\
and video rentals, Conn is not surprised
to see the film rereleased to theaters.
"No one has seen the movie once or
twice, they've seen it 50 times on the
average," said Conn. 'And this new gen-
eration that has only seen it on video is
going to go' berserk. They're going to be
so excited."
A new video version also will be
released featuring interviews with cast
members and behind-the-scenes players.
And by an amazing Hollywood
coincidence, Frenchy's 'Grease'
Scrapbook (Hyperion), Conn's first
book, hits the stores as well. Conn got
the idea for the book thanks to her
mother, Beverly Shmerling, the per-
forming arts director of the Atlanta
Jewish Community Center who spent
a lot of time on the Grease set taking
photographs.
The book is a virtual yearbook for
the film's fictional Rydell High School,
said Conn. Among the great Grease triv-
ia items accumulated by Conn are such
tidbits as:
* Henry Winkler and Susan Dey
were offered the leading roles before
John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.
* The film was titled Brilliantina in
Italy and Vaselina in Mexico.
* The cast chewed 100,000 pieces of
bubble gum in 53 days of shooting.
In the book, Conn speculates on
Alan Abrams is a Toledo-based free-
lance writer.