Your favorite modernist is getting three new adaptations this summer.
Virginia Woolf, supreme oracle to us sad literary girls, has graced the silver screen this summer — thanks to a remarkable trio of new adaptation.
Although his work is famously neurological—and, rightly so, literary-This is far from Virginia’s first celluloid rodeo. In 1992, feminist filmmaker Sally Potter took over wolf’s orlandoA joyous creation with Tilda Swinton at the center.
In 1997, Marlene Goris and screenwriter Eileen Atkins took a pass mrs dallowayRun by another gorgeous lady from England (Vanessa Redgrave). And in 2003, we saw a series of best actresses living in different Virginias in the Stephen Daldry/Michael Cunningham. hours.
To everything there is a season. But this summer the flowers are blooming once again…bury. as david hudson seen in Criteria“By some strange coincidence, two new reimaginings mrs dalloway have appeared within a few weeks of each other this year.” And Virginia has more to contend with this fall, when Tina Gharavi’s blistering attack on Wolf night and day Hit the theatres.
So, what’s in water?
Like their strongest predecessors, all three new adaptations are based on the source material. Eri and Chuko Esiri’s Clarissa Takes Wolf’s infamous heroine to Lagos. The critically acclaimed, new, Nigerian Clarissa (played by Sophie Okonedo) premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival In Diversity As “radiant with sadness”.
Devika Girish film commentary noted that the class conscious and critical content of the Esiri brothers’ “post-colonial adaptation” works particularly well in the new situation.
“Woolf’s fragmented, time- and perspective-hopping novel – about a high-society woman hosting a party and contemplating lost, young love and life choices, while somewhere else in the same city, a World War I veteran is suffering from severe PTSD,” he wrote, “is transferred almost seamlessly to present-day Nigeria.”
last day takes similar liberties with time and space, even as it respects Woolfian liminality. brainchild of a visual artist Rachel RoseThis is the new spin on texture Dalloway Follows two women around present-day New York on the Fourth of July.
Rose is known, Per Diversity“Investigating the human condition and its relationship with the natural world for her sensory-led video installations.” Critics have praised this Dalloway riff for its catchiness, supernatural scene. angie han in hollywood reporter The film has been called “an experience whose impact is more easily felt than explained”.
Which sums up Virginia’s feelings. I have a clear idea why sadness, post-colonialism and Wagner Moura are calling to the indoor kids this summer. but then what to make night and day?
This adaptation may be the largest tonal deviation in this proper crop. In a warm review for GuardianPeter Bradshaw cited its charming heroes, and praised a certain whimsy in the filmmaking.
She also appreciated how Gharavi has adapted an early book “creatively against the grain of the novel, enhancing Woolf’s single glimpse reference to astronomy and making it the center of the heroine’s desire.”
If not the vibes, perhaps the common spice in all these adaptations is just this: yearning. Virginia knew a lot about the human condition. But it is his ability to meet her painful needs that transcends time and space.
As Blair McLendon, editor of Clarissaput it in film commentary: Wherever and whenever these Woolfian women go, they have the same problem, “which is making love work. And then class and sex and gender and colonialism intrude as organizing forces into their lives.”
Evergreen stuff.
