Well, I just commented that this really is a good movie in spite of my criticism below, and as if to make my point, I find that there are lots of little odds and ends about it that seemed worthy of their own blog entry. How’s that for an endorsement?

(In case it needs to be said, there’s spoiler info included, so if you haven’t seen it yet, steer clear.)

In no particular order of importance:

1. The Nose - It took me a while to realize that Virginia Woolf was being played by Nicole Kidman, what with The Nose and all. In one of the special features with the DVD, the three actresses are expressing mutual admiration for each other on a talk show somewhere, and they talk about “The Nose” — the prosthetic that Kidman was bound to have to wear in order to overcome her own perky little nose and approach Woolf’s serious one. In one of those actorly moments that makes you go “huh?”, Moore says that wearing The Nose “freed up” Nicole to play the part. Freed her up from what, the terrible burden of tiny-nosey-ness? And, given that Kidman won an Oscar for this role, shouldn’t they have given a little Oscar to The Nose?
2. Bad flour! - In the scene where Brown is making the birthday cake with her son, they have a very targeted shot of the Gold Medal flour bag. I’m sure that was just a product placement shot that got away from them, but I think Gold Medal should ask for their money back. Because somehow they made the flour look very sinister, as if a bag of flour is a bad thing to have around when you’re depressed.
3. What happened to “Mrs. Dalloway”? - Given that the book was proffered as the symbolic link between the three women living 80 years apart from each other, didn’t it seem funny how little info they gave you about it? In Laura Brown’s story, you don’t even know why they bothered. If I hadn’t read in the DVD label that reading “Mrs. Dalloway” is helping her deal with her depression, I never would’ve surmised that. Maybe it was a matter of just not being able to make a movie long enough to tell all they would’ve liked. Perhaps the book on which this movie is based does a better job? The author commented that reading “Mrs. Dalloway” had been a breakthrough moment for him as a young man. It would be nice to be able to relate to that.
4. “The ‘This Side of Glory’ Oscar goes to …” - Toni Collette, who played Brown’s rather plastic friend, Kitty. I have no idea how she made that part of the movie so interesting, especially since there was a definite air of stereotyping to her character. But I thought her performance was a level higher than others in the movie, which is saying a lot.
5. Tips for making little boys look pensive - I had wondered how they got so much acting out of the little boy in the movie. There are all kinds of times he’s just looking at what’s going on as if he’s taking everything in on many levels of thought. In the director’s comments, he says that he would tell fairy tales to the boy while they filmed him, and then splice the footage into the scenes. I thought that was interesting.
6. The denouement that wasn’t - So the big moment that turns Clarissa around is talking to Brown, who owns up to what a self-absorbed, unfeeling creep she is. Right? As I said before, if you blink you miss it, but Clarissa has an “aha” moment when Brown says that she “chose life” (meaning that she abandoned her family and new baby without a backward glance. BOY, Hollywood people suck sometimes!). So what’s the point of that? That Clarissa can now choose life and go and give Sally a soul kiss (ewww!) just because Brown put life in terms of a choice you make? That seems really lame, but maybe I missed something.
7. Other symbols - Besides “Mrs. Dalloway”, symbol watch brings up the following: suicide (and in two of the three stories, it’s seen as a necessary and liberating thing.); a woman-on-woman kiss as a good, bad or very bad idea; abundant flowers (which somehow also ended up looking sinister and inappropriate); supposedly celebratory occasions that end up depressing the snot out of you (I’m stretching to include Vanessa’s visit to Virginia as an occasion) and food as pure evil (kidneys, bad birthday cake, “the crab thing”). Runner-up: They had a lot of fun with the action of breaking eggs, but they didn’t manage to give any to Virginia to complete the trifecta.