Breaking Baz @ Cannes: How The Filmmaking Esiri Brothers & Sophie Okonedo Put ‘Clarissa’ In The Spotlight

When twin brothers Arie and Chuko Esiri decided to adapt Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway and give it the title of Clarissa, her Christian name, they say they were “freeing her” from being someone’s property, someone’s wife.

It’s as if the character has been freed from the shackles and allowed to be herself.

“That’s the idea, for her to be a person more than Richard’s wife,” says Chuko, referring to the name of her husband.

Sophie Okonedo plays Clarissa as a contemporary woman in present-day Lagos, Nigeria, and she seems more independent than how she’s characterized in the novel which is set in the years following the end of World War I.

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