«Vita & Virginia», portrait of a painful love story – Corriere.it

One of most famous loves of the Bloomsbury Group’s radical British chic history was that between two opposite female writers such as Virginia Woolfrenowned author of magical books and friend Vita Sackville-West, known in 1922 and from their long correspondence (ed. Donzelli). Both get married with patient men impervious to common decency, they wrestled a lot with a karat of looks before giving in to senses: Virginia introverted and closed in the inspiration that sometimes it suffocated in the true sense of the word, the other instead cheekyworldly and capriciouscapable of escaping to Paris, of disguising herself as a man, so much so that mother, Baroness Sackville (Isabella Rosselliniwhat a grandmother!) ponders about take away her custody of the little ones. The unreleased film shot in 2019 by Chanya Button and inspired by the theatrical pice of Eileen AtkinsVirginia tells from the depths of her eyes, better than in The Hours where we followed Nicole Kidman
until the suicide in 1941 in the River Ouse with le pockets of the coat full of stones
.

The slow incubation of affection, a prism that becomes love then passionfirst at a distance and then without limits, generated Woolf’s masterpiece Orlando (see the movie with Tilda Swinton and also there Huppert in theater directed by Bob Wilson), story of a heroin which passes through time, space and feelings, between wakefulness and sleep, a gender festival. The film often has the advantage of elegantly analyzing up close, in extremely anxious close-ups, thishybrid affectionthe fear of sex & scandal, with actresses who live the vastness of a relationship beautifully painful: the Australian Elizabeth Debicki and the former Bond girl (Quantum of Solace) Gemma Arterton. For revision there is always the book written by Nigel Nicholson in 1973 (Portrait of a wedding, and. Lindau), son of diplomatic heroic that he had married, suffered and accepted Vita Sackville-West.

Life & Virginia (2018), by Chanya Button, Netflix