GLENN KENNY'S REVIEW


I hadn't read the Michael Cunningham novel upon which this movie is based, but from what I knew of the book, it seemed an odd thing to adapt. The novel is made up of intertwined accounts of three 20th-century women: real-life author Virginia Woolf, whose madness begins recurring as she tries to write Mrs. Dalloway; a housewife in a perfect-seeming post-WWII American household who's reading Mrs. Dalloway; and a contemporary woman arranging an award party for a former lover, a poet dying of AIDS who has nicknamed her “Mrs. Dalloway.” The whole enterprise seemed distinctly literary-the sort of thing that, when given the proper respect in its adaptation, should pretty much play like death itself onscreen. Well, surprise, surprise. Director Stephen Daldry; screenwriter David Hare; actors Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep, Ed Harris, Toni Collette, and more; and, let us not forget, producer Scott Rudin, who got all these talents together, have made a most engaging, moving, and provocative film out of The Hours. The portraits of the individual women are so artfully limned that one is free to ignore the larger feminist subtext (as someone who distrusts message movies, I was happy to do so, just as those who love such things will lap up the picture's “point”) and revel in the pithy dialogue and deft interweaving of story lines. As for the acting, though Moore and Streep are impeccable, Kidman, playing Virginia Woolf, is first among equals. Her beautifully crafted prosthetic shnoz camouflages her flawless face, but it's the sheer conviction and power of her performance that makes you forget it's Nicole Kidman, movie star, up there.

—Glenn Kenny