Vita & Virginia
IFC Films | Release Date: August 23, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
43
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 18 Critic Reviews
Positive:
3
Mixed:
11
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
Chicago TribuneKatie WalshAug 28, 2019
This peek into a famous love story makes the audience a participant in the affair, inspiring questions of perspective and truth in love and art, where the only truth worth anything is one deeply felt. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreAug 17, 2019
It is a film of (somewhat) mutual admiration and clever, clever words, the product of “a wickedly brilliant mind” (Woolf) and a popular poettess and wit, descended from Gypsies (Isabella Rosellini plays Vita’s disapproving Gypsy grande dame mother), a “a sapphist” with scandalous appetites. Read full review
70
Film ThreatLorry KiktaSep 11, 2019
The film is truly gorgeous and interesting for fans of literature. Read full review
60
VarietyJessica KiangAug 22, 2019
As Vita & Virginia loses its girlishness, drawn like the tides to the solemn maturity of Debicki’s performance. With her as the lodestar, this is a stranger and more intriguing film than it really has a right to be, one that becomes less about a clandestine courtship between famous women, and more about Woolf’s relationship with her writing, and with the workings of her own beautiful, restless mind. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawJul 26, 2019
The drama – featuring the kind of flat, chirruping upper-middle-class English accents that aren’t usually voiced on screen – is intriguing and uncompromisingly high-minded, right on the laugh-with/laugh-at borderline, but interestingly unafraid of mockery. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Martha SchabasNov 20, 2019
It’s light research, worn heavily, and the romance that ensues feels just as about as studied and slight. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleCarla MeyerSep 4, 2019
Were “Vita” better developed and edited, one might find joy in its rejection of the patriarchy. But the female-friendly dialogue relies too heavily on exposition. Nobody asks if anyone wants a cup of tea. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungAug 22, 2019
Precious little is revealed and one is left with the feeling that the material needed a different kind of treatment to illuminate its protagonists. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloAug 20, 2019
Once Sackville-West gets bored with Woolf and starts seeing another woman, garden-variety jealousy takes over. Not quite as fascinating as the story of a man who inexplicably metamorphoses into a woman and doesn’t age for 300 years. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineDerek SmithAug 20, 2019
The film frequently falls back on the stately demeanor of countless other historical biopics and period pieces. Read our review. Read full review
40
TheWrapElizabeth WeitzmanAug 26, 2019
It’s always extra frustrating when a biopic falls short, especially if its subject is as compelling as the relationship between two brilliant iconoclasts like Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. Read full review
40
Screen DailyWendy IdeAug 22, 2019
Even Arterton at smouldering full wattage can do little to hold together a picture in which the chemistry between the two leads is non-existent and many of the directorial choices are decidedly odd. Read full review
40
CineVueJoe WalshJul 12, 2019
Vita and Virginia is a remarkably chaste and safe film given its wealthy subject matter. Read full review
40
The Observer (UK)Simran HansJul 7, 2019
Debicki (The Tale, Widows) is wonderful as Woolf, a wry and solemn observer, but the rest of the film is all too literal. Read full review
38
Boston GlobeTy BurrSep 4, 2019
The tumultuous emotional, sexual, and literary relationship between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West would make a fascinating movie — it’s a shame that Vita & Virginia isn’t it. Read full review
38
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoAug 23, 2019
Vita & Virginia wastes the talents of four people — its two subjects and the two women that play them. It is a deeply frustrating movie, a film that not only can’t find the right tone from scene to scene but feels disjointed in individual moments too. Read full review
37
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanSep 4, 2019
Vita & Virginia may be about two fascinating characters, but it’s also case of words, paradoxically, obscuring the real people who wrote them. Read full review
30
The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisAug 22, 2019
Vita & Virginia takes a passionate, real-life affair between two enormously gifted writers and proceeds to throttle the life out of it. Read full review
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