Vita & Virginia

Vita and Virginia follows the ever-changing relationship between Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolfe. Initially, Vita is fascinated with Virginia. She takes steps to meet her, befriend her and write to her despite Virginia’s prickly countenance. However, Vita is in a lavender marriage to a diplomat. As a result, Vita and Virginia often spends weeks or months apart. During these times, they correspond through increasingly passionate letters.

After a lengthy absence, Vita and Virginia reunite. At this point, Virginia allows their relationship to progress past platonic.  The women inspire each other and Vita is shown to be helpful for Virginia’s depressive moods. Unfortunately, these two women have very different world views, especially when it comes to love. The major problem is that Vita is free with her affections and love. She is married and carries on several affairs at any given time. Vita and Virginia struggle with their love for each other despite differences of opinion and large personalities. Plus, Virginia has major depression which doesn’t help anything.

For all that Vita & Virginia visually revels in being a period piece, it is a film with unavoidably modern sensibilities. From the music to the conversations, Vita & Virginia places itself in the 2010’s as much as it does the 1920’s. Your mileage may vary with this. I can absolutely see the modern-sounding score and characters talking about current events with seemingly a knowledge about future events and attitudes to bother some people, especially history purists. Personally, I wasn’t overly put off by it though. There were enough positive qualities to distract me from this.

My favourite part of the film is how romantic it is. In every sense of the word. Vita & Virginia is beautiful to look at. Visually, It feels romantic. Additionally, they chose to a heavily romantic angle in how to depict Vita and Virginia’s relationship. I love this. It’s wonderful to see two women in this time period love each other so passionately. They write each other letters! They write whole books for each other! Both women go above and beyond to display their affection for one another. The film revels in this and I as an audience member revel in it also.

In addition to the romance, what I love about Vita & Virginia is its depiction of female genius. This is a rare thing for films to focus on when. There’s lots of depictions of tortured male genius but few about women. Seeing a movie that depicts two incredibly talented women is rarer still. And they’re not in competition! They support each other! Vita and Virginia’s romance is also heavily intellectually-based. They speak of heavy topics with intelligence and thought. Seeing two queer women be depicted as talented and intelligent above everything else was something really pleasing to see. It made me feel that white girl sense of empowerment that comes from seeing other white ladies be exceptional at things.

The biggest problem I have is that they do seem to struggle with the character of Virginia Woolfe. She remains unknowable throughout the film. It does seem like the writers didn’t quite know how to deal with her. This is not going to be the definitive depiction of Virginia Woolfe by any means.

However, even this inability to fully grasp one of their leads couldn’t bring me down. Vita is most often the point of view character. As such, it sort of makes sense that Virginia remains opaque and intimidating to the audience. Vita herself sees Virgnia as difficult to read and understand throughout the film. Additionally, Elizabeth Debicki is very good at acting. Her performance helps mask some of the weaknesses in the writing of this character.

Vita & Virginia got fairly middling reviews. I personally disagree. I will admit something held this movie back from being fully great. But even though I can’t say this movie is great, I thought it was really good and I really liked it. It’s incredibly romantic, beautiful to look at and has two excellent female lead characters. Personally, I recommend the film. Don’t expect murders or car explosions. But, if you’re fine with years’ long lesbian seduction and literary discussions used as foreplay, absolutely give Vita & Virginia a try.

Overall rating: 8.3/10

Other WLW films in similar genres