Synopsis
Socialite Vita Sackville-West and literary icon Virginia Woolf run in different circles in 1920s London. Despite the odds, the two forge an unconventional affair, set against the backdrop of their own strikingly contemporary marriages.
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Cast
- Elizabeth DebickiVirginia Woolf
- Gemma ArtertonVita Sackville-West
- Isabella RosselliniLady Sackville
- Rupert Penry-JonesHarold Nicolson
- Peter FerdinandoLeonard Woolf
- Emerald FennellVanessa Bell
- Nathan Stewart-JarrettRalph
- Sam HardyNigel Sackville-West
- Gethin AnthonyClive Bell
- Rory Fleck-ByrneGeoffrey Scott
Recommendations
- 75
Movie Nation
It is a film of (somewhat) mutual admiration and clever, clever words, the product of “a wickedly brilliant mind” (Woolf) and a popular poettess and wit, descended from Gypsies (Isabella Rosellini plays Vita’s disapproving Gypsy grande dame mother), a “a sapphist” with scandalous appetites. - 60
The Guardian
The drama – featuring the kind of flat, chirruping upper-middle-class English accents that aren’t usually voiced on screen – is intriguing and uncompromisingly high-minded, right on the laugh-with/laugh-at borderline, but interestingly unafraid of mockery. - 60
Variety
As Vita & Virginia loses its girlishness, drawn like the tides to the solemn maturity of Debicki’s performance. With her as the lodestar, this is a stranger and more intriguing film than it really has a right to be, one that becomes less about a clandestine courtship between famous women, and more about Woolf’s relationship with her writing, and with the workings of her own beautiful, restless mind. - 50
Slant Magazine
The film frequently falls back on the stately demeanor of countless other historical biopics and period pieces. Read our review. - 50
The A.V. Club
Once Sackville-West gets bored with Woolf and starts seeing another woman, garden-variety jealousy takes over. Not quite as fascinating as the story of a man who inexplicably metamorphoses into a woman and doesn’t age for 300 years. - 50
The Hollywood Reporter
Precious little is revealed and one is left with the feeling that the material needed a different kind of treatment to illuminate its protagonists. - 40
The Observer (UK)
Debicki (The Tale, Widows) is wonderful as Woolf, a wry and solemn observer, but the rest of the film is all too literal. - 40
CineVue
Vita and Virginia is a remarkably chaste and safe film given its wealthy subject matter.
