Returned to the Toronto International Film Festival for the first time since 2023 and saw a dozen flicks over five days. The first included two literary adaptations.

CLARISSA

I kicked off my TIFF with Nigerian filmmakers/twin brothers Arie and Chuko Esiri’s follow-up to their feature debut Eyifome (This is My Desire) which I had coincidentally seen five years ago to the date (it was also my first cinema screening since the Covid shutdowns eighteen months before.) Eyimofe was eye-catching and unique, a diptych regarding a man and a woman in Lagos each confronting a hardship related to another family member.

For their second feature, they’ve chosen to adapt Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway of all things. Given a closer look, the text’s domestic drama and interpersonal relationships have some precedent in the earlier film. Working with a larger budget and international actors portends a sellout move but no fear—for a Woolf adaptation, Clarissa retains the vivid sense of place and attention present in the minute gestures of their previous film but on a vaster scale.

Not too familiar with Woolf’s novel apart from its interpolation in The Hours, the film’s first half was a bit hard to follow, shifting between two time periods and devoting ample time a seemingly ancillary character. Fortunately, these strands come together in the second half with said character not so much galvanizing the narrative as he does enable us to more closely understand Clarissa (played by a dazzling Sophie Okonedo as older and by promising newcomer India Ria Amarteifo as younger.) Transporting this story to Lagos also opens it up substantially while still targeting the universality of Woolf’s construct of a middle-aged woman throwing a big party for herself, reflecting on a live lived and pondering what it all means.

While David Oyelowo and Ted Lasso actor Toheeb Jimoh are both good as respectively older and younger versions of Clarissa’s ex-lover Peter, the arguably highest profile cast member steals the show. As Clarissa’s tart young friend Sally, Ayo Edebiri is relatable and charismatic as ever, reminding one of her defining work in The Bear and Bottoms rather than her subsequent string of film flops. Whenever Clarissa occasionally drifts or risks pathos from its tragedies, she fully lights up the screen—a stirring contrast to Okonedo, whose gimlet-eyed gaze is more of a chiaroscuro effect.

GLAXO

The second literary adaptation of the day was of Hernán Ronsino’s 2009 novel about four young men in a backwater Argentine town not long after the Juan Peron-disposing military coup. Beginning and ending in 1984 (with a few sly nods to then-contemporary film The Terminator), the bulk is centered in the late 1950s where Miguelito (Joaquin Bonadeo) suddenly finds a mentor in Ramon, a retired policeman (Marco Subiotto) new to town (whose chief industry is the pharmaceutical company of the title). His glamorous young wife, La Negra Miranda (Lali Espósito) is the envy of Miguelito and his friends as she often shows up their youth dances looking for a partner to share the floor with (and occasionally much more.) Miguelito is blissfully unaware of Ramon’s past involvement in the coup, so it does not bode well for the former when he forges a friendship with Miranda (and soon, much more.)

Director Benjamín Naishtat transfers the narrative well from page to screen, holding one’s attention as the story gradually clicks into place across time periods (visually delineated by their own aspect ratios) and gets good-to-nearly-great work from his ensemble (especially Bonadeo, who hadn’t acted before and Esteban Bigliardi as the older version of Miguelito’s friend Flaco. Still, given Esposito’s flair of a presence, I was anticipating something wilder and more florid like Almodovar who would’ve really had fun with (and queered up) this material. As is, however, Glaxo resonates as a period piece, a betrayal fable and possibly a Mormon revenge fantasy.