The fascinating true story of the love affair between socialite and popular author Vita Sackville-West and literary icon Virginia Woolf.The fascinating true story of the love affair between socialite and popular author Vita Sackville-West and literary icon Virginia Woolf.The fascinating true story of the love affair between socialite and popular author Vita Sackville-West and literary icon Virginia Woolf.
- Awards
- 1 win & 2 nominations
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaBoth this film and the play on which it is based were derived from letters between Vita Sackville-West and acclaimed author Virginia Woolf.
- GoofsDriving in a convertible with the top down, neither woman has windblown hair.
- Quotes
Harold Nicolson: I hear nothing but reports of her madness.
Vita Sackville-West: Madness, what a convenient way to explain away her genius.
- ConnectionsFeatured in London's Hollywood: Welcome to Pinewood (2006)
Featured review
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.
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.
- ferdinand1932
- Aug 18, 2019
- Permalink
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Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Official site
- Language
- Also known as
- Віта і Вірджинія
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $42,741
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $3,408
- Aug 25, 2019
- Gross worldwide
- $800,675
- Runtime1 hour 50 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1
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