Clarissa review Sophie Okonedo mesmeric as Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway decamps to Nigeria

"It is set partly in modern-day Lagos, whose ambient streetscapes are conjured up with style, and partly in the more bucolic Abraka in southern Nigeria, 30 years in the past. It is essentially a film about life-choices, about the terrible inevitability of marrying the wrong person and yearning to make sense of the past without regret. The film moves with an easier and more unselfconscious swing than, say, Stephen Daldry's Dalloway-themed movie The Hours from 2002."

"Sophie Okonedo plays Clarissa; the title removes that patriarchal surname, a subject that is a bone of contention for her younger self and younger friends. In the present day, she is an elegant and stylish middle-aged woman whom we see organising a party for the evening at which she will be reunited with friends and some who, once upon a time, were more than that. She lives in a handsome Lagos house with servants whom she treats firmly but not cruelly unlike her late father, who thought nothing of humiliating them in front of young Clarissa and her contemporaries."

"She is married to Richard (Jude Akuwudike), a decent but dull man who works for Shell, a fact that, for Clarissa, given the anticolonialism of her youth, may constitute a persistent dull ache of disillusion. Her guests for the evening include Peter (David Oyelowo), a failed writer who was deprived of his muse, his wellspring of inspiration and indeed the love of his life when he"

The film presents Clarissa’s life through shifting timelines between modern-day Lagos and the earlier rural setting of Abraka. It centers on the inevitability of marrying the wrong person and the desire to make sense of the past without regret. The narrative moves smoothly between before and after, using techniques such as rediscovered photographs from earlier years. Clarissa is shown organizing a party in the present, preparing to reunite with friends and former intimacies. Her household reflects firm but not cruel treatment of servants, contrasting with her father’s humiliations. She is married to Richard, whose work for Shell becomes a lingering source of disillusion tied to her anticolonial youth. The evening’s guests include Peter, a failed writer deprived of inspiration and love.

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