The Hours

Having established settings in Richmond, England, 1923, Los Angeles, 1951, and New York City 2001, director Stephen Daldry working from David Hare’s script based on Michael Cunningham’s novel pivots between Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf with husband Stephen Dillane, Julianne Moore as housewife Laura (John C. Reilly her husband, Jack Rovello her son) and Meryl Streep as New Yorker Clarissa, Allison Janney her partner, the links not yet elaborated, in The Hours, 2002.

Continuing his complex shifts of time and place, director Stephen Daldry gives us Meryl Streep as Clarissa in Manhattan buying flowers (from Eileen Atkins) for a ceremony honoring her AIDS-stricken friend and ex-lover, novelist Richard (Ed Harris), who lives in the famous Triangle Buiiding, with visits to Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf, and Julianne Moore as mom Laura, in 1951 LA, whose son, though we don’t know it yet, is the same Richard, in The Hours, 2002.

With barely-recognizable Nicole Kidman as writer Virginia Woolf, in her Academy Award-winning performance, directed by Stephen Daldry, from David Hare’s script and Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-wining novel, the shocking and factual opening of The Hours, 2002, also starring Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore.