An average movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since there was a decent cast involved and since it was available on Netflix, I thought I might as well check it out. To be honest, I had never heard of Vita Sackville-West before watching this movie and, even though I did study English in College, I actually never read a book written by Virginia Woolf which is, I have to admit it, pretty shameful. At least, it did see ‘Orlando’, Sally Potter’s adaptation not so long ago which was definitely helpful. Still, their relationship was really intriguing so the damned thing definitely had some potential. On top of that, I thought that Gemma Arterton and Elizabeth Debicki were both pretty good. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was that Arterton’s best performance but, on the other hand, it was probably due to the fact that she never had the opportunity to play such an interesting character before. Concerning Debicki, she is really an interesting actress but, to honest, after watching her in ‘The Crown’, I kept getting flashes of Princess Diana while watching this movie (probably not her fault though). And, yet, even if the material was really solid, the damned thing still didn’t really work though and I think it mostly had to do with the directing. Basically, these 2 women were lovers for apparently 10 years but it was definitely not how their relationship was handled in this movie. Instead, even though Vita Sackville-West spent so much time to woo Virginia Woolf, even though they seemed seriously in love with each other, Vita started to ghost Virginia which was obviously not what happened at the time and she suddenly showed up with some other random girl. The issue with this approach was it came really out-of-the-blue and, above all, it really shortchanged their relationship and these two extraordinary women. Indeed, I’m pretty sure that they didn’t pursue a classic lesbian love affair which explained why they were lovers for a decade and why they remained friends for many years afterwards. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it was still a decent watch though and I think it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in this subject.