Vita and Virginia. (12A.)
Directed by Chanya Button.
Starring Elizabeth Debicki, Gemma Arterton, Rupert Penry-Jones, Peter Ferdinando, Emerald Fennell and Isabella Rossellini. 110 mins.
The Academy awarded Nicole Kidman an Oscar for playing Virginia Woolf; so what on earth are they going to give Elizabeth Debicki for this performance in the same role. Probably nothing: she hasn't bothered to stick on a funny nose. The Bloomsbury set author is a challenging role: she needs to be casually superior yet pathetically vulnerable, and she suffers from debilitating attacks of depression. Debicki though incorporates all these elements effortlessly. Photos of Virginia Woolf give you get an impression of someone like Vanessa Redgrave, and that would be about the level Debicki is working on right now.
It may be Debicki's triumph but the rest of the cast are all excellent. Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West may be a libertine variation on the typical Ian Carmichael upper-class Silly Ass, but Arterton's performance has a menacing undercurrent. The script by Button and Eileen Atkins, suggests that the voracious West initially saw Woolf as a particularly rare butterfly to add to her collection.
A period piece biopic about the affair between two writers is exactly the kind of film that this country does; not necessarily so well, but it does do them and does them almost as if there is some unknown compulsion for them to be made. The story of Woolf's dalliance with writer/ gardener/ diplomat wife Vita Sackville-West has all the makings of the perfect British period piece hell hole, but Button's film excels in just about every way. It's one of the rare films about writers that does seem engaged with the process of writing, and the life of writers. It even manages to make the Bloomsbury Set seem human.
Directed by Chanya Button.
Starring Elizabeth Debicki, Gemma Arterton, Rupert Penry-Jones, Peter Ferdinando, Emerald Fennell and Isabella Rossellini. 110 mins.
The Academy awarded Nicole Kidman an Oscar for playing Virginia Woolf; so what on earth are they going to give Elizabeth Debicki for this performance in the same role. Probably nothing: she hasn't bothered to stick on a funny nose. The Bloomsbury set author is a challenging role: she needs to be casually superior yet pathetically vulnerable, and she suffers from debilitating attacks of depression. Debicki though incorporates all these elements effortlessly. Photos of Virginia Woolf give you get an impression of someone like Vanessa Redgrave, and that would be about the level Debicki is working on right now.
It may be Debicki's triumph but the rest of the cast are all excellent. Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West may be a libertine variation on the typical Ian Carmichael upper-class Silly Ass, but Arterton's performance has a menacing undercurrent. The script by Button and Eileen Atkins, suggests that the voracious West initially saw Woolf as a particularly rare butterfly to add to her collection.
A period piece biopic about the affair between two writers is exactly the kind of film that this country does; not necessarily so well, but it does do them and does them almost as if there is some unknown compulsion for them to be made. The story of Woolf's dalliance with writer/ gardener/ diplomat wife Vita Sackville-West has all the makings of the perfect British period piece hell hole, but Button's film excels in just about every way. It's one of the rare films about writers that does seem engaged with the process of writing, and the life of writers. It even manages to make the Bloomsbury Set seem human.
