Film
Vita and Virginia
- Director
- Chanya Button
- Certificate
- 12A
- Running Time
- 110 mins
Gemma Arterton goes full smoulder as scandalous socialite Vita Sackville-West, while Elizabeth Debicki unleashes the social awkwardness as literary icon Virginia Woolf in this period sapphic romance adapted from Eileen Atkins‘ book of the same title.
Tastefully done, this could have been pure arthouse catnip, especially as it traces the affair that led to the creation of the never-more-modish Orlando. But reviews from the film’s premiere at the Toronto Film Festival were decidedly mixed, with detractors pointing to director Chanya Button‘s heavy-handed use of the couple’s letters and curious decision to soundtrack 1920s literary London with an anachronistic trance/EDM score, which, as one reviewer objected, “is so glaringly wrong, it undermines any credibility the film might have otherwise mustered”.
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