Vita & Virginia

With Gemma Arterton, Elizabeth Debicki, Isabella Rossellini, Rupert Penry-Jones. 110 minutes + trailers.

Gemma Arterton, Elizabeth Debicki and Isabella Rossellini star in Chanya Button’s study of the passionate love affair between novelist Virginia Woolf (Debicki) and aristocratic poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West (Arterton). When their paths cross, Vita decides that despite their marriages, the beguiling, stubborn and wildly gifted Virginia will be her next conquest, no matter what; and their ensuing relationship inspires Woolf to write her bold, experimental novel Orlando, with Vita the inspiration for its androgynous, gender swapping protagonist. Styled somewhere between Edwardian England and the present day, Button’s film is a vivid, daring and suitably unconventional celebration of two women who ignored social barriers to pursue a forbidden connection.