Vita & Virginia

First, let me say I'd go see Gemma Arterton reading the phone book: she has the rare facility of being able to play period stories as well as contemporary ones. She's great as Gemma Bovery and the Duchess of Malfi. She's well supported by Isabella Rossellini as Lady Sackville who tries without success to call Vita back to reality.

Second, what quirk of casting gave us Elizabeth Debicky, not yet thirty, as Virginia Woolf who started her three-year relationship (1925-28) with Vita at age 43? She just can't carry off the part of a woman in early middle age, and what's more she has this irritating drawl/vocal fry that put me off for most of the picture. So if you wish to see this interesting story, be aware it's been handled before (Portrait of a Marriage, The Hours) and sometimes better.

With all the scathing reviews, Vita & Virginia still had me from beginning to end.

Its prose exudes seductive eloquence; call me a hopeless romantic but the picture as a whole is like a beautiful ballad or poetry. The synth-pop-esque score feels refreshing against the 1920s backdrop, it doesn't feel out of place; and the cinematography is sleek (I immediately developed a particular fondness towards Virginia's 'hallucinations'). When it comes to the love scenes: less is more, n'est-ce pas?

(Vita and Virginia) is carefully, delicately weaved and it's beautiful in every sense of the word. Rarely do I show this much affection towards a film I've only seen once; but this had me, it just did.

Don't let other reviews deter you from giving it a chance...all it really needs is the right audience.

Greetings again from the darkness. The historical landscape of relationships is littered with the remains of artist couples who began with a cosmic connection and ended with a sonic boom. Add in the socially toxic matter of same-sex attraction from a century ago, and you have a starting point for the romance-friendship-inspiration between writers Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf. Director Chanya Button co-wrote the script with Eileen Atkins, and it's adapted from Ms. Atkins play and the personal letters of Virginia and Vita ... correspondence that covered many years and hundreds of letters.

Gemma Arterton (TAMARA DREWE, 2010 and QUANTUM OF SOLACE, 2008) stars as writer Vita Sackville-West, a successful poet, novelist, and columnist. Vita was also known for her free spirited ways, and sometimes scandalous behavior. Virginia Woolf is played by Elizabeth Debicki ("The Night Manager", THE GREAT GATSBY), and she does really nice work capturing the troubled genius, and the glimmers of hope during her time with Vita. The two women were so very different in their approach to life and writing, although each faced their own challenges.

We see their first meeting, and the immediate enchantment that occurs as their eyes meet across the room. However, what makes their relationship interesting is the long and winding path to consummation. The interesting parts come as Vita toys with the fragile Virginia, though it's clear their connection is quite strong. Though the connection was strong, the relationship was quite complex. Vita was a fan of Virginia's talent. Virginia was an admirer of Vita's strength and confidence. They seemed to push each other - sometimes for the better, other times for the worse.

The film opens as Ms. Woolf's book "Jacob's Room" is being typeset and printed. It's quite an artistic way to show the mechanics of the process, and credit goes to Cinematographer Carlos De Carvalho for a segment that would typically be little more than filler. We learn about Vita's secretly "open" marriage to diplomat Harold Nicholson (Rupert Penry-Jones) and her constant battle with her mother Lady Sackville (Isabella Rossellini) over scandals and the family reputation. Virginia's husband Leonard (Peter Ferdinando) runs their printing business, and is seen as vital to his wife's emotional stability, despite the void in other marital aspects. Virginia's artist sister Vanessa Bell (Emerald Fennell) is quite an interesting character whose backstory (also a part of the Bloomsbury Group) is teased enough that she might deserve her own film.

The film features a couple of memorable lines of dialogue, both spoken by Vita. During a BBC radio program she boldly claims "Independence has no sex", and in an early discussion with Virginia states "Popularity is no sign of genius". Vita's brazen step traveling as a man with her previous lover Violet Keppel is mentioned, but mostly this is focused on the class differences and the 'snatched moments' for Vita and Virginia. Vita's exotic spirit and Virginia's struggle with mental health are made clear (even using special effects for the latter). "Visions" of conversations bring the words on the letter pages to life, though it does seem that the filmmakers played things a bit too safe in order to capture a mainstream audience. The music of Isobel Waller-Bridge (Phoebe's sister) brings a contemporary feel but it's at times in contrast to the high gloss presentation. For the women who wrote and inspired the amazing novel "Orlando", and led one of the more tumultuous historical lesbian affairs, it could be argued that they deserved a bit more risk taking on the big screen. Still, "X" marks the spot for Virginia's writing room, and we do understand why discretion might be the right call.

While the production can't be faltered, and even Virginia Woolf is impersonated quite well, there is a dramatic hole to this which is common with biographical films.

The events and the nature of the people should be more involving, more genuinely dramatic, and yet it is like the reflective scenes from a Chekhov play; somber and infected with a sense of its own importance. It doesn't make the time vivid, so much as refract the events through a literary effort. The result is tedious which is not helped by the intellectual mannerisms.

A good example here is the dullness of the Woolf circle as portrayed whereas in real life they were lively, highly sexual and amusing, amusing to the point of exhaustion. In this film they are dour; sure, we are told they are all licentious and amoral, but what we see on screen is not that.

Woolf was wickedly funny and witty. Sackville-West was verbally dexterous too. It's absent here. They are earnest and plain, and Woolf would not have tolerated that.

The outcome of this love affair is the book, 'Orlando', which if someone hasn't read it, seems a curious object. This, in a way, says much about the film, in that it is a paean to a much adored book.

Novelists, and the business of writing, are not always a success in films. Painters and musicians do better because they are more social arts, but the thrill of writing and words are, paradoxically, not easy to transmit.

The book which emerged from the affair has some prestige, though, for its ardent fans, it's best to avoid Nabokov's assessment of it: he described Orlando as pretentious, bourgeois, nonsense; a view in part, which has tended to loom over Woolf's entire body of work. Nabokov's insight may well apply to this film too. Well, Woolf was very sharp at criticism too.

I have to admit, I am only borrowing or tweaking a title of another movie because it does fit quite perfectly here. I am not a scholar of either of the two real life figures portrayed here and could not tell you how much of what we see here supposedly happened exactly the way it is shown. Or close to the way it is shown I reckon.

Having said that, it seems to be another forbidden love situation. Extremely good acting and the mentioned setting make this a movie that some will love a lot. On the other hand, since the pacing is slow and the time period may not be to everyones taste, there may also be a lot of dislike to what is being served.

Vita and Virginia - as the title suggests the movie draws its power mostly from the interaction of these two characters - which is more than enough for me.