There is tremendous confidence in Rachel Rose’s simple drama Last daythe kind of ingenuity that is often born from interdisciplinary art. The film marks her feature debut, but it shares its title with one of Rose’s many video installations—specifically, one that captures the ages of the Earth through photographs of objects around her daughter’s bedroom. On the surface, this exhibition has little in common with the feature film of the same name, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and loosely adapts the structure of Virginia Woolf’s novel. Mrs Dalloway. Rose’s confidence, however, in revealing the story of suburban mothers who feel disconnected from themselves, ends up – like much of her curatorial work – in a powerful rumination on modernity.
An impressionistic prologue lures us from the jungle to civilization, as gentle sunlight kisses the fur of a beautiful fawn that, once stumbling onto the side of a stark, cold road, finds the body of its mother. A rotting deer carcass appears in the front of an immaculate house in Westchester, New York, where writer Julia (Alicia Vikander) is planning a Fourth of July party while arguing with her daughter Eve (Eva Jade Hatford) about a scheduled playdate.
Before we learn much about Julia—whom we also see attending a support group, given her father’s recent death—Rose’s photographs establish an unforgiving relationship between death and stifling modernity. Through the distorted reflections of her characters on glass and metal surfaces, the director extracts the contradictory inner moods she seeks to bury around others.
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Last day ★★★1/2 (3.5/4 stars) |
In a chance meeting at a café, Julia picks up the lost wallet of young nurse Taylor (Victoria Pedretti), but the former’s busy day delays her trip to return it. Meanwhile, Rose also focuses on Taylor’s life as a mother of three, the youngest of whom – a newborn – has left her a pent-up, prescription-medicated mess. Although the two women rarely interact on screen, Taylor’s postpartum depression feels like a reflection of Julia’s frustrations with motherhood (which in turn has left her unable to write), as if the two women were meant to meet. There’s no grand plan for them to help each other — the film, as its title suggests, has a nihilistic undertone — and yet, the prospect of their meeting leads to a powerful thematic cross-fertilization.
They are, in essence, two sides of the same coin, in the way that their wealthy lifestyles and vulgar surroundings contribute to their malaise. Julia’s husband is often away, leaving her to unpack her late father’s belongings in Manhattan mostly on her own, while her teenage daughter is none the wiser about her mother’s moods, allowing Vikander to build unspoken resentment. Meanwhile, Taylor lives in an idealized image of domestic contentment as seen from afar—house, car, nice husband, three kids—but she’s always seconds away from collapse, giving Pedretti the kind of ferocious unpredictability for which she’s famous.
in Last dayvolatility bubbles beneath the surface of polite conversations, which each supporting actor carries out with gentle naturalness. The only exception to this stifling etiquette is the ex-lover Julia meets in town, Peter (Wagner Moura in a brief but memorable role), whom she catches up with before old wounds begin to open, causing her to run away again.
There’s little catharsis to be found throughout the film, as Rose’s story emerges as one of muted, festering emotions that, at best, give way to fleeting moments of clarity (if only that). It’s primarily a mood piece, whose plotless meanderings feel tonally focused, thanks in part to Eric Yu’s thoughtful cinematography, which steers clear of its overt formal trappings (in films like I saw the glow of the television and Teen sex and death in Miasma camp) and ensures that every plain, reflective surface around Rose’s characters illuminates them while on the verge of blinding them. The world around Julia and Taylor is too big for them, and they rarely have an escape route.
The story takes predictable depressing turns, in keeping with both Mrs Dalloway And the director’s battle with PPD. However, the fact that the film exploits such horrific territory, with such dramatic precision, also makes it artistically cathartic, as if Rose were purging herself of the pain she depicts. Mining her most intimate concerns, both as a mother and a creator, she arrives with one of the most surprising debuts of the year, which quietly but firmly builds to a climax of poignant contemplation. There will be a few emotionally affecting films this year.
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