British director Stephen Daldry and writer David Hare were last night tipped as likely Academy Award winners next year, as US critics greeted their first glimpse of their latest film with lavish praise.
This weekend's reviews of The Hours, starring Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf, and co-starring Meryl Streep and Ed Harris, have been positively glowing. American news channel CNN yesterday described the film as 'transcendent', adding: 'Everything about it cries out "Oscar bait". This is the stuff that makes Academy voters bite. It's historical. It's literary.'
Elsewhere in the US media's love-in for the film, the magazine Salon said that the film was, 'a lovingly crafted meditation on death, loss and literature'.
The film's candidature for a brace of Oscars was strengthened by being applauded by the Los Angeles Times as a film containing, 'masterful writing, superb acting and directorial intelligence'. The paper added that Hare's 'sparse, eloquent script' had made a film whose 'emotional power takes viewers by surprise, capturing us unawares in its ability to move us deeply'.
The US film bible, Variety - one of the most important critical voices in US film - said: 'Considerable intelligence and strategic finesse have been brought to bear on this handsomely mounted adaptation of Michael Cunningham's 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Screenwriter David Hare, director Stephen Daldry, and the outstanding cast are on the novel's wavelength, and try to represent it as faithfully and sensitively as possible.'
The film has already been singled out for a total of seven nominations at the Golden Globe awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Score and Best Writer.
The film had been subject to high praise in American film circles before this weekend. The New Yorker's film critic, David Denby, recently wrote: 'The Hours is a lovely, serious work that should find a larger audience than this kind of literary movie usually does.
'The revelation is Nicole Kidman as Woolf. Tall, pale, severely beautiful, eyes cast down, with an awkwardly darting energy and a sudden harsh anger, as of an enormous bird disturbed in its rest.'
For her role, Kidman, 35, was made almost unrecognisable in a prosthetic nose and make-up, which took over three hours to apply each day.
The film consolidates the likelihood of a strong showing by British talent in the run-up to the Oscar nominations in February, where it is envisaged The Hours will almost certainly feature heavily alongside Best Actor nominations for Daniel Day-Lewis's turn in Martin Scorsese's $100 million (£62m) Irish-American epic Gangs of New York, Michael Caine in The Quiet American, and Hugh Grant in About a Boy.
In comparison to the simple working-class spit 'n' shine of Billy Elliot, The Hours is an ambitious leap for Daldry. The film, which was in gestation for two years, initially seemed set to never see the light of day. Reports throughout the film's shooting gave rise to rumours of hirings, firings and drawn-out retakes.
But the end result, according to US critics, is a triumph. The film is a complicated time-piece, which cuts back and forth among three locations - Los Angeles in 1951, New York in the present and England in the 1920s - fusing the intricate storyline with monologues. The movie, made for a relatively lean budget of $21m by the production company Miramax, is a film for grown-ups, according to its director. 'I did find it remarkably upsetting. I was upset in the right way and in the right places - that sense of the women feeling trapped, that feeling you're going mad,' Daldry said recently.
The film also sees Daldry, like Sam Mendes, complete the transition from theatre to cinema.
After attending university at Sheffield, Daldry moved to London, drawing attention for his work at the fringe theatre The Gate. He directed more than 100 plays, including David Hare's one-man show Via Dolorosa, before moving to the Royal Court Theatre at the age of 32.
During his stint at the Royal Court, the British film production company Working Title began to groom Daldry for a movie career. He helmed his first feature, Dancer, later renamed Billy Elliot, in 2000.
Set in northern England at the time of the 1984 miners' strike, Billy Elliot told the story of a boy's desire to be a ballet dancer.
It was both praised and damned by critics for its sentimentality, despite earning rave reviews for its young acting star Jamie Bell. The film won Oscar nominations for screenwriter Lee Hall, supporting actress Julie Walters, and director Daldry.
Regarded as one of Britain's leading playwrights Hare, who once had four new productions on Broadway in a 12-month period, is a prolific writer. His writing and directing credits include the plays Plenty, Racing Demon, Skylight, Amy's View and The Blue Room.
