LAST DAY, THE
(director/writer: Rachel Rose; screenwriter: novel by Virginia Woolf; cinematographer: Eric K. Yue; editor: Taylor Levy; music: Drums and Lace, Sofia Degli Alessandri; cast: Alicia Vikander (Julia), Victoria Pedretti (Taylor), Wagner Moura (Peter), Eva Jade Halford (Eve), Jihae (Olivia), Michael Patrick Thornton (John), Marin Ireland (Ellen, literary agent), Sinclair Daniel (Maggie); Runtime: 99; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Lucie Elwes, Rachel Rose, Mason Plotts, Pamela Koffler, Christine Vachon; West End Films/Killer Films; 2026)
“A sensitive portrait of motherhood.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
The directorial debut of the visual artist Rachel Rose is a sensitive portrait of motherhood. She directs and writes the screenplay for the Virginia Woolf classic 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway, as a modern update. It’s set in upstate N.Y.’s Mount Kisco. The character study is about two women who don’t know each other and are from different classes but who morosely react to being stay-at-home mothers.
Julia (Alicia Vikander) is the once promising writer who published a novel ten years ago. She now has a rich husband and a daughter. Taylor (Victoria Pedretti) is the depressed married mother of three who has serious mental issues. Though different in every way, we observe them both navigate the perils of motherhood over the July 4th holiday.
The upper-class Julia expects a lot of guests for the Independence Day celebration she regularly gives at her house with her husband. But first she goes into Manhattan to talk to her agent (Marin Ireland), but doesn’t mention she still has writer’s block. By chance she runs into a former boyfriend (Wagner Moura), also a writer, and their meeting only brings on their old arguments of why she stopped writing after her novel is published. She also visit’s her supportive late father’s apartment, who recently died and left her grieving his loss. Back in her residing town she finds a wallet in a parking lot belonging to a neighbor she doesn’t know, and plans to return it on her ride back home (it’s Taylor’s wallet, and they briefly meet at that time for the first and only time).
The anxiety-ridden and docile middle-class Taylor, who sees a psychiatrist and takes meds, starts the day taking her infant to see the pediatrician. She then goes to the library and to the bakery.
Both women are bogged down raising a family, whose husbands are not all in with them.
The film opens with a doe run-over by a car and her fawn hovering over her in confusion. It ends with a massive fireworks display at the big colonial house where Julia is joyfully celebrating with her friends, as her traveling husband arrives late in a chauffeured car.
I could see how married life is not a bowl of cherries for them, but like the fawn I’m a little confused as what to make of it all. Though I appreciate the fine performances by Vikander and Pedretti, and the outstanding cinematography by Eric K.Yue.
It played at the Tribeca Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 6/20/2026 GRADE: B
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