VITA & VIRGINIA
Half Bloomsbury…
CERTIFICATE 12A DIRECTOR Chanya Button STARRING Gemma Arterton, Elizabeth Debicki, Isabella Rossellini SCREENPLAY Eileen Atkins, Chanya Button DISTRIBUTOR Thunderbird Releasing RUNNING TIME 110 mins OUT 5 JULY
In our #TimesUp world, it’s encouraging that this elegant period drama is made predominantly by, and about, women. How disappointing, then, that a film focusing on two of the 20th Century’s most trailblazing female literary firebrands feels so curiously underpowered. Following the meeting and subsequent affair between Bloomsbury set authors Vita Sackville-West (Gemma Arterton) and Virginia Woolf (Elizabeth Debicki), Vita & Virginia explores themes of muse and artist, mental health and the sense of madness/sadness inherent in intense, short-lived attraction and eroticism.
Leaning heavily on the torrid letters the women wrote to one another via direct-to-camera talking heads gives both authors their authentic voices, but this stagey device fails to connect emotionally. Perhaps inevitably, given it’s adapted by Eileen Atkins and director Chanya Button from Atkins’ play of the same name. Also, although Arterton is at her most perky and Debicki tremulous, there’s a fundamental lack of chemistry that is key to understanding the hold the couple had over each other.
Meanwhile, Isobel WallerBridge’s anachronistic electronic score only distracts. Button is more successful at conveying the Bloomsbury set’s pre-war permissiveness (hedonistic parties, enlightened husbands), which inspired Woolf’s masterpiece, Orlando, and serves as a banging drum for modern feminism. But, as the ladies themselves would no doubt agree, there needs to be as much substance as style.
THE VERDICT
Beautiful, well-intentioned and timely, but lacking any real passionate punch.