Director: Marlene Gorris Writer: Eileen Atkins ("Upstairs Downstairs" and "The House of Eliot") Cinematographer: Susan Gibson Producers: Lisa Katselas Pare & Stephen Bayly Vanessa Redgrave - Mrs Dalloway Natascha McElhone - Clarissa Dalloway Rupert Graves - Septimus Warren Smith Michael Kitchen - Peter Walsh

This film re-captures the "charms" of 1920s' London society, especially through the wonderful costumes (Judy Pepperdine), but it also raises questions. Questions about the effects of the choices we make in our lives and about the role of women in society. Questions which are just as relevant today as they were in the 1920s when Virginia Woolf wrote the book on which the film is based.

It is 1923 and London is enjoying a beautifully warm summer's day. Clarissa Dalloway, superbly played by Vanessa Redgrave, is preparing for one of her famous parties. Married to a successful but rather boring member of parliament, Clarissa has money, security and respect. She orchestrates her parties with the aim of ensuring that every one of her guests will remember them as a time of happiness and harmony.

But the calm beauty of the day is unsettled by memories of the past. The Great War may be over but its legacy lingers and is personified in Septimus Warren-Smith (Rupert Graves), a young soldier suffering from shell shock whose story runs parallel to and intrudes on the edges of Clarissa's comfortable life, although they never meet.

Preparations for the party prompt Clarissa to remember her life as a young woman, some 30 years earlier, an idyllic time filled with friends, fun and laughter, when rules were broken and it seemed possible to change the world. A time before war, before marriage and before children. Why did she make the decisions she did? Were they the "right" ones?

We come to know and understand Clarissa through flashbacks which interweave with her preparations for the party. With the older Clarissa, we too long for the energy and liveliness of the younger woman and are tempted to regret that this young woman chose comfort and security instead of the romance and adventure that beckoned in the form of the adoring Peter Walsh, who returns unexpectedly from India on the day of the party.

Vanessa Redgrave brings Mrs Dalloway brilliantly to life. The screenplay was written with her in mind. It was Redgrave who encouraged Eileen Atkins to adapt "Mrs Dalloway" for the screen after they appeared together in Atkins' off-Broadway hit, "Vita and Virginia", a play about Virgina Woolf and her friend Vita Sackville West.

Directed by Marlene Gorris who won an Academy Award for her earlier film "Antonia 's Line", and shot by Sue Gibson with strong support performances from, among others, Natascha McElhone as the young Clarissa and Michael Kitchen as the older Peter, "Mrs Dalloway" offers many pleasures and raises plenty of topics for hot discussion over a coffee afterwards.

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