{"id":673472,"date":"2026-05-16T13:09:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T13:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/673472\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T13:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T13:09:08","slug":"clarissa-review-sophie-okonedo-in-a-sharp-take-on-mrs-dalloway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/673472\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Clarissa’ Review: Sophie Okonedo in a Sharp Take on ‘Mrs. Dalloway’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWith its stream-of-consciousness style and fragmented perspectives, Virginia Woolf\u2019s Mrs. Dalloway is a beguiling novel with understandably few adaptations. Marleen Gorris tried with her shaky 1997 film starring Vanessa Redgrave as the titular protagonist and Rupert Graves as the tragic Septimus. A film inspired by a book inspired by Woolf (Michael Cunningham\u2019s The Hours) followed, and a handful of stage adaptations came and went. Now, Arie and Chuko Esiri, the twin brothers behind the critically acclaimed drama Eyimofe<\/a>, attempt their own translation \u2014\u00a0and how lucky we are for that.<\/p>\n

\n\tPremiering in the Directors\u2019 Fortnight sidebar, Clarissa is a compelling interpretation of Mrs. Dalloway that transposes the action of Woolf\u2019s novel from 1920s London to present-day Lagos. Clarissa, played with terrific restraint by Sophie Okonedo<\/a>, is now a Nigerian society woman preoccupied by the infamously jammed Lagosian traffic, interactions with her housekeepers, and memories of youthful summers spent debating the meaning of democracy in Nigeria and the intellectual and political priorities of a developing nation-state. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tClarissa\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tA quiet revelation.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVenue: Cannes Film Festival (Directors\u2019 Fortnight)
Cast: Sophie Okonedo, Ayo Edebiri, David Oyelowo, India Amarteifio, Toheeb Jimoh, Fortune Nwafor
Directors: Arie Esiri, Chuko Esiri
Screenwriter: Chuko Esiri
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t2 hours 7 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tSeptimus (Fortune Nwafor, a revelation) is an off-duty military officer who has just returned from fighting the insurgent group Boko Haram in the northern region of the state. He struggles to fend off thoughts of conflict (ongoing since 2009) and anchor himself to his present-day reality, one in which he\u2019s happily married to Aisha, a well-regarded Muslim seamstress (Modesinuola Ogundiwin).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Esiri twins combine this new framework with a poetic register that has become increasingly popular since their feature debut premiered in Berlin six years ago. Clarissa embraces the cinematic grammar employed by filmmakers like Raven Jackson (All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt<\/a>), Savannah Leaf (Earth Mama<\/a>), RaMell Ross (Nickel Boys<\/a>) and most recently Akinola Davies Jr. (My Father\u2019s Shadow<\/a>). Similar to the films by these directors, Clarissa revels in the splintered language of memory. Jonathan Bloom\u2019s gorgeous cinematography (the film was shot on 35mm) and Blair McClendon\u2019s disciplined editing display an intuitive understanding of the source text, finding rhymes and echoes in close-ups of a lip touching a knee or a kingfisher bird crying from a branch. Kelsey Lu\u2019s spectral score threads these images together, adding to the dreamy quality of the film.<\/p>\n

\n\tClarissa begins on a slightly different note than Woolf\u2019s novel. The Esiris (the film was directed by both but the screenplay was written by Chuko) eventually get to the flowers, but first they offer the image of a young Clarissa (India Amarteifio of Netflix\u2019s Queen Charlotte<\/a>) sneaking out of the room of young Peter (Industry\u2019s Toheeb Jimoh). It is 1994 and the pair, along with other friends, are in Abraka, a verdant town in southern Nigeria\u2019s Delta state. Their days are spent swimming in the lake, picnicking by the beach and debating poetry and literature. At the sound of morning prayers, an older Clarissa awakens from this dream and shuffles out to her lawn, where the leafy bush has been replaced with the industrial skyline of Lagos. So begins her day. The flowers must be procured, the tents put up in the garden, and the finishing touches added around the home before her guests arrive.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Clarissa meanders through Lagos, a portrait of the bustling West African city emerges. Just as in their debut, the Esiris luxuriate in scenes of people at work and observations of an increasingly cosmopolitan locale, subtly revealing trenchant class differences. Nowhere is that more apparent than with Septimus, whose story comes to us in potent fits and starts. When looking at his Lagos, the camera often closes in, reflecting the kind of claustrophobia poverty tends to engender. Septimus lives in a small apartment with his wife, travels by danfo (communal minibuses) and struggles to acclimate to civilian life after a traumatic tour in the North. Just as Mrs. Dalloway sought to reveal how Britain abandoned veterans, Clarissa gestures at the power and collateral damage of Nigeria\u2019s military. Nwafor, who starred in Eyimofe, is astounding; in his hands, Septimus becomes a heartbreaking symbol of a nation\u2019s broken promises. His performance lives in his eyes, which manage to convey a sincere na\u00efvet\u00e9 and a sullenness all at once.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Clarissa\u2019s life seems more expansive \u2014\u00a0wider shots accompany her thread \u2014\u00a0it is also chillier. Okonedo captures that steeliness well, communicating the oppressive nature of the character\u2019s life within the context of Nigerian society. Clarissa married Richard, a respectable and doting man in politics played by Jude Akuwudike, but she still thinks of her former lover Peter (played in the present by a fine David Oyelowo<\/a>) and the intensity of her relationship with Sally (played by Ayo Edebiri<\/a> as a youth and Nikki Amuka-Bird as an older woman). The only person she seems to still be in touch with is Ugo (Danny Sapani), whom they all used to lightly tease and who now operates as a kind of town crier, offering news and gossip alike.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn flashbacks, an attraction blooms between a young Clarissa and Sally. Amarteifio and Edebiri have an understated chemistry that makes the covert passion between these two women believable. To Clarissa, Sally represents an effortless cool \u2014\u00a0a composite of countercultural standards that she secretly wishes to embody. While there\u2019s an understandable obliqueness to their relationship, one does wish that the filmmakers had afforded more space to their intellectual sparring. There\u2019s something alluring about Sally, who\u2019s never far from a cigarette or a book, and how her beliefs counter Clarissa\u2019s traditional ones. Some of the best scenes in Clarissa are when the young friends gather around the table to debate the state of postcolonial literature and the irony of a newly democratic nation under military rule.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s a radical bent to the Esiris\u2019 interpretations of and deviations from Mrs. Dalloway. Woolf wrote the novel to reveal the madness of a post-war society and the disjointed nature of a nation undergoing significant change. And for all the ways she sharply articulated the oppressed condition of women, she also relied on a colonial framework and deployed racist tropes. A sly achievement of Clarissa is in how it not only acknowledges this history, but upends it too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With its stream-of-consciousness style and fragmented perspectives, Virginia Woolf\u2019s Mrs. Dalloway is a beguiling novel with understandably few…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[60478,49,48,43877,225439,5328,246895,247755,75,337,247756],"class_list":{"0":"post-673472","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ayo-edebiri","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-cannes","12":"tag-cannes-2026","13":"tag-cannes-film-festival","14":"tag-cannes-film-festival-reviews","15":"tag-david-oyelowo","16":"tag-entertainment","17":"tag-movies","18":"tag-sophie-okonedo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}