It is a common currency in “The Last Day” for women to talk about their children as Julia (Alicia Vikander) and Taylor (Victoria Pedretti) go about their 24 hours leading up to the 4th of July, with the latter asking how many months along the nurse that’s treating her during a routine checkup is while the former gets an earful from the Botox technician tending to her, lamenting that her kids “are only in 7th grade, so they have a long way to go” before leaving the nest. Both are mothers themselves in different situations – Julia is free to prepare for a party by herself when she can put her daughter Eve in a friend’s care for most of the day, but Taylor has no such option, saddled with three kids including a newborn that don’t leave her a spare second to herself – and for as much empathy as they have because of their experience, they are also burdened with the knowledge that no one else’s is exactly like theirs, making actual conversation rather than mere chitchat seem limited at best and potentially embarrassing at worst. When true conversations are pretty much off the table, writer/director Rachel Rose is able to convene a dialogue that transcends words in her arresting feature debut, employing the framework of Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” in which a day of routine leads to reflection for Julia and Taylor, who may spend only seconds of screen time in each other’s company yet come to form a consummate portrait of the psychic toll of motherhood.
Rose, a visual artist who laces striking compositions throughout “The Last Day,” also displays a keen sense as a storyteller to look at something from different angles, starting with the suburbs outside New York in which the film is set. While Julia has retreated from the city, staying in the historical home that once belonged to her parents, Taylor appears stuck there, likely dreading a future when being part of the PTA will take up even more of her time. The two cross paths at a local bakery where Julia has a cake to pick up for the Independence Day party at her house later that evening while Taylor just needs a pastry en route to hospital where she is loathe to return, though somewhat surprisingly she’s not a patient there, but an employee with a week left before she’s back on the job. She doesn’t notice that she’s dropped her wallet in the parking lot (a somewhat fascinating modern touch is that with all the apps on her phone, there’s no real reason for her to realize it’s missing), yet Julia resolves to return it after completing her own chores for the day, which involves heading to Manhattan and getting a glow up for both herself and her daughter and touching base with people in the publishing world who have wondered where her follow-up is to an acclaimed novel (yielding a delicious scene with Marin Ireland as a no-nonsense editor).
Julia confesses that it’s been hard to come up with anything in the wake of her father’s death, one of her biggest champions, but it’s an easy answer for a far more difficult question that she has yet to reconcile, wondering why rather than being inspired after her daughter’s birth, she has lacked imagination ever since, and as she has the time and space to ruminate now, cutaways to Taylor preparing breakfast for an unappreciative family and taking her baby to Mommy and Me reading sessions offer at least some semblance of an explanation when there’s never a moment of peace. Neither have husbands who make their lives any easier as Julia’s only shows up at the party by dinner time in a chauffeured car, as one can assume he does every day, and the strongest show of support Taylor’s can offer is insisting that their kids “say please” when making demands of her, but the issue of feeling alone is far more complex than having no relief, richly presented in its many dimensions here as both women face the seemingly contradictory nature of some decisions they’ve made in the past.
Rose has a pair of strong performances from both Vikander and Pedretti, who in particular is a revelation as the bone-tired Taylor, subtly reflecting the social station that governs their experience as neither feels they have any right to complain in the privileged lives they lead, yet nearly bursting at the seams to share their pain with someone and although there are fireworks at the end of “The Last Day,” the spectacular display is hardly in the sky alone, finding a situation as highly combustible on the ground and plenty of kerosene in the filmmaking to bring it to a boil.
“The Last Day” will screen again at Tribeca at the Village East on June 7th at 8:15 pm and June 12th at 2:15 pm.