DVD: The Hours

The Hours is a film about three depressed women. That sentence alone is probably enough to put off a significant amount of viewers. To be more precise it is about three women whose life is shaped by the novel Mrs Dalloway. Virginia Woolf, as she writes it, a fifties housewife as she reads it and a present day editor in New York as she is defined by it. The clever script jumps between the timeframes very effectively and the performances from the award seeking three leads to the starry supporting cast are all strong without showboating. The problem is that the film encourages the viewer to appreciate the intelligence of the idea and the quality of the execution rather than leaving you to engage in the emotions. In this case less may have been more and a film following on of the characters may have been stronger.