There's a lot of confidence in Rachel Rose's understated drama The Last Daya type of intelligence that is often born from various arts. The film marks her first feature, but it shares its title with one of Rose's many video installations—in particular, one that captures Earth's moments with images of objects around her daughter's bedroom. On the surface, the show shares little of its own wordplay feature, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and loosely adapted the structure of Virginia Woolf's. Mrs. Dalloway. However, Rose's conviction, in presenting the tale of two suburban mothers who feel drunk, retains—like much of her museum work—a powerful contemporary message.
The impressive prologue lures us from the forest to civilization, as the cool rays of the sun kiss the fur of a beautiful deer, who, upon reaching a desert, cold road, discovers the body of his mother. A rotting deer carcass is in front of a pristine home in Westchester, New York, where writer Julia (Alicia Vikander) is planning a Fourth of July party while she clashes with her unborn daughter Eve (Eva Jade Hatford) over a planned play date.
Before we learn much about Julia—who we also see attending a support group, given her father's recent death—Rose's images establish an unforgiving connection between death and the crippling modernity. By portraying the twists and turns of his characters on glass and metal surfaces, the filmmaker brings out the strange inner feelings they want to bury among other people.
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THE LAST DAY ★★★1/2 (3.5/4 stars) |
A chance meeting at a coffee shop sees Julia pick up the lost wallet of a young nurse, Taylor (Victoria Pedretti), but the former's busy day delays her journey to retrieve it. Meanwhile, Rose focuses on Taylor's life as a mother of three, whose youngest—a newborn—has left her in a depressed state of chaos and prescribed medication. Although the two women rarely interact on screen, Taylor's postpartum depression (PPD) feels like a reflection of Julia's frustration with motherhood (which also left her unable to write), as if the two women were destined to meet. However, there is no good plan for them to help each other—the film, as its title indicates, has a line of disobedience—but nevertheless, the possibility of their meeting causes a strong cross-pollination of topics.
In fact, they are two sides of the coin, in the way that their rich lifestyle and cowardly environment contribute to their illness. Julia's husband is always absent, leaving her to move her late father's belongings out of Manhattan mostly alone, while her teenage daughter is very smart about her mother's condition, allowing Vikander to develop an unspoken anger. Taylor, on the other hand, inhabits the picture-perfect image of domestic contentment as seen from afar—a house, a car, a kind husband, three children—but is always seconds away from unfolding, giving Pedretti the kind of brutal unpredictability he's known for.
In The Last Daythe changing bubbles beneath the polite dialogues, which each supporting actor carries out in a natural way. The only exception to this routine is the ex Julia runs into town with, Peter (Wagner Moura in a brief but memorable role), who tackles her before old wounds begin to open, sending her running again.
There is little catharsis to be found throughout the film, the story of which Rose stands as one of the quietest, growing emotions, at best, allowing for fleeting moments of clarity (even then). It's an emotional piece first and foremost, whose aimless wanderings feel grounded, thanks in part to the measured cinematography of Eric Yue, who departs from his formal flourishes (in films like I Saw The TV Was On again Teen Sex and Death at Camp Miasma) and ensures that each empty, bright spot around Rose's characters both illuminates them while tending to blind them. The world around Julia and Taylor is beyond their control, and they rarely have a way to escape.
The story takes the expected turns, along with both Mrs. Dalloway and the filmmaker's battle with PPD. However, the fact that the film captures such a macabre landscape, with incredible precision, and renders it artfully clean, is as if Rose is erasing herself from the very tragedy she portrays. In digging into her deepest concerns, as a mother and a creator, she comes up with one of the most impressive debut songs of the year, which builds quietly but assertively to a carefully planned climax of painful meditation. There will be few emotional films this year.
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