Vita & Virginia is an English, independent film — a biographical romantic drama. The feature-length art house film and character study hones in on the romantic affair between the writer Virginia Woolf (Elizabeth Debicki) and socialite and novelist Vita Sackville-West (Gemma Arterton), which took place during the 1920s in London.
After Sackville-West meets and becomes intensely infatuated with Woolf during a party within the famous literary circle the Bloomsbury Group, a decade-long affair unfolds between them, despite each writer's respective (open) marriages. The screenplay adaptation is by Eileen Atkins (who wrote the original source play of the same name and originated the role of Woolf) and Chanya Button. Much of the screenplay comprises direct quotes from Woolf’s and Sackville-West’s love letters to each other, and their affair serves as the basis for Woolf’s groundbreaking novel, Orlando.
Both women are often seen in fashionable clothes with long silhouettes popular during the decade. However, though both were upper-class women, Sackville-West usually wears the most fashion-forward styles — often with a masculine cut or a safari aesthetic influenced by her travels abroad — while Woolf opts for more modest house clothing. Sackville-West also styles her hair in a flapper bob, while Woolf keeps her hair long and often tucked back in a low bun.
Vita and Virginia’s attraction to each other is as much about their meeting of the minds as it is about the meeting of their “bodies, bodies, bodies”. They are both intellectually fascinated with each other, each admiring the other's writing prowess or genius. That said, there is at least one very intense lovemaking scene after many scenes of building sexual tension. Their respective marriages to their husbands, while loving, are often seen as a comfortable but slightly distant relationship, but not without their attractions.
Woolf’s and Sackville-West’s ways of speaking with each other, to each other, and of each other are filled with modernist imagery, poetry, and beauty, often each seeing the other as a great source of inspiration as well as intrigue. While their relationship ultimately comes to an end (and well before Woolf’s death by suicide), the dynamic leaves both of them forever changed — both personally as well as in their own perspectives on their written work.
In the press junkets, screenwriter and director Button spoke often and extensively about the queer themes and motifs throughout her film.
While the term “bi” does not appear in the script, considering that the word was only a few decades old at the time of their relationship we give the screenplay a pass for not using it, as it was not in high use at the time in 1920s London. That said, Vita & Virginia is an often lilting, beautiful example of a queer relationship unfolding at its own pace and not without its spots of passion — and a heaping dose of intellectual admiration for each other.