Nicole Kidman’s fake nose and heart win ‘The Hours’ award as queer classic

MEichel Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Time, inspired by Virginia Woolf’s seminal 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway, imagines a day in the life of three women separated through time. The trilogy follows Woolf as she struggles to write Mrs. Dalloway. Laura Brown, a depressed housewife in postwar America who reads Woolf’s novels. and Clarissa Vaughan, a New Yorker who is the modern embodiment of Woolf’s titular character.

Although Cunningham’s 1998 text was widely praised, it was initially considered unsuitable due to its non-linear structure and stream-of-consciousness approach that paid homage to Woolf’s pioneering style. However, since its publication, The Hours (its name is taken from the working title of Mrs. Dalloway) has been reinterpreted as an opera, most notably in the 2002 film directed by Stephen Daldry.

As the title suggests, the film explores how the routine of a day can be both beautiful in its ordinariness and shocking in its oppressive routine. The three women at the center of this movie are just trying to get through it. Wolf (Nicole Kidman) suffers from deep depression and is unable to cope with her personal responsibilities. Brown (Julianne Moore) is suffocated by the pressures at home, suppressing her true desires. And Vaughn (Meryl Streep) ignores her own psychological needs while caring for her ex-lover who is dying of AIDS.

The women’s individual struggles are linked through interwoven storylines, suggesting that despite the passage of time and sociopolitical progress, many women remain weighed down by the constraints and expectations of a heteronormative, patriarchal society, burdened by expectations of being a wife or mother before being a human being.

The film version of Time is best known for winning an Academy Award for Nicole Kidman, who famously wore a prosthetic nose to transform into Wolf. Kidman’s win is often cited as an example of “de-glamourization,” in which actors minimize their physical beauty in pursuit of award glory. But to condemn The Hours as solipsistic “Oscar bait” is a disservice to both the film and Kidman’s wonderfully sour performance.

Kidman, who made The Hours while going through a divorce from Tom Cruise, channels her personal pain into Wolfe’s quiet desperation and anger. As Woolf struggles with suicidal thoughts, Kidman balances the author’s anguish with a fox-like intelligence.

Moore and Streep, playing two women on the verge of a nervous breakdown, give some of the best performances of their careers. Streep, whose name is actually mentioned in Cunningham’s novel, is mesmerizing in the film’s climactic breakdown scene, highlighting her physical and emotional vulnerability.

The trio stars alongside a supporting cast of murderers, including great performances from Toni Collette, Ed Harris, and Allison Janney.

Upon release, the film was praised for its excellent cast and Philip Glass’s music. But it was the queer community that truly embraced The Hours. Beyond its melodramatic tendencies (particularly parodied in Kath and Kim), it was also a sympathetic portrayal of queer sexuality throughout the 20th century.

The Hours is acutely aware of how discovering one’s queerness can be both terrifying and liberating. Each protagonist has a unique relationship with queerness, and each sexual encounter threatens to unravel their understanding of themselves. For Woolf and Brown, their queerness reveals the promise of a different life, free from the inertia of domestic prison. For Vaughn, an open lesbian who loves her gay ex-boyfriend, the kiss reopens old wounds and forces her to confront her buried feelings.

The way it plays with time and structure is also distinctly queer. The film’s discontinuous structure, inspired by Woolf’s subversive screenwriting technique, Bucks Convention, highlights how queerness is rooted not only in a shared history, but in a history that disrupts and distorts traditional, linear, “straight” storytelling.

• The Hours is available to rent in Australia, the UK and the US. For more recommendations on streaming in Australia, click here