He has tremendous faith in Rachel RoseHis underrated drama The Last Daythe kind of versatility that often arises 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 Earth through photographs of objects around her daughter’s bedroom. On the surface, this exhibition shares little with its stage name, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and loosely adapts the structure of Virginia WoolfS ‘ Mrs. Dalloway. Yet Roza’s certainty, in unraveling a tale of two suburban mothers who feel disconnected from themselves, ends up being – like much of her museum work – a powerful rumination on modernity.
An impressionistic prelude lures us from a forest to civilization, as soft sunlight kisses the fur of a beautiful foal, who, upon crashing to the side of a dark, cold road, finds his mother’s corpse. Rotting Deer Carcass foregrounds a pristine home in Westchester, New York, where author Julia (Alicia Vikander) plans a Fourth of July party while arguing with her pre-teen daughter Eva (Eva Jade Hatford) for a scheduled game date.
Before we learn much about Julia – who we also see attending a support group, given her father’s recent death – Rose’s images create an unforgiving link between death and suffocating modernity. Through her characters’ distorted reflections on glass and metal surfaces, the director brings out the inner moods they seek to bury around other people.
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THE LAST DAY ★★★1/2 (3.5/4 stars) |
A chance meeting at a coffee shop sees Julia retrieve the lost wallet of a young nurse, Taylor (Victoria Pedretti), but the former’s busy day delays her journey to return it. Meanwhile, Rose also focuses on Taylor’s life as a mother of three, whose youngest – a newborn – has left her in a state of suppressed chaos and prescribed medication. Although the two women rarely interact on screen, Taylor’s postpartum depression (PPD) feels like a reflection of Julia’s own frustrations with motherhood (which have in turn left her unable to write), as if the two women were destined to meet. However, there is no grand plan in place for them to help each other – the film, as its title suggests, has a nihilistic streak – and yet, the possibility of their meeting results in a powerful thematic cross-pollination.
They are, in essence, sides of the same coin, in the way that their affluent lifestyles and dim surroundings contribute to their respective illnesses. Julia’s husband is often away, leaving her to clean out her late father’s belongings in Manhattan mostly by herself, while her teenage daughter is none the wiser about her mother’s state of mind, allowing Vikander to create unspoken resentments. Taylor, meanwhile, lives a perfect portrait of domestic contentment as seen from afar—the house, the car, a kind husband, three kids—but she’s always seconds away from discovery, giving Pedretti the kind of wild unpredictability she’s known for.
IN The Last Dayinstability bubbles just beneath the surface of polite conversations, which each supporting actor carries off with delightful naturalism. The only exception to this stuffy label is an ex Julia runs into in town, Peter (Wagner Moura in a brief but memorable role), with which he catches him before old wounds begin to open, sending him running once more.
There is little catharsis to be found throughout the film, whose story Rose positions as one of silent, heated feelings that, at best, give way to fleeting moments of clarity (if only that). It’s a comedy piece first and foremost, one whose plotless meandering feels tonally focused, thanks in part to the measured cinematography of Eric Yuewhich departs from its overtly formal flourishes (in films such as I saw The Shining TV AND Teenage sex and death at Camp Miasma) and ensures that every simple, reflective surface around Rose’s characters illuminates them while managing to dazzle them. The world around Julia and Taylor is simply too much for them, and they rarely have an escape route.
The story takes strange turns, in line with both Mrs. Dalloway and its own filmmaker’s battle with the PPD. Yet the fact that the film mines such macabre territory with such dramatic precision also makes it artistically cathartic, as if Rose were purging herself of the anguish she portrays. Tapping into her most intimate maternal and creative anxieties, she arrives with one of the year’s most startling debuts, which builds quietly but insistently to an arc-edited climax of poignant reflection. There will be few emotionally moving films this year.
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