43
Metascore
18 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 75Movie NationRoger MooreMovie NationRoger MooreIt 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.
- 60The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawThe 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.
- 60VarietyJessica KiangVarietyJessica KiangAs 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.
- 50Slant MagazineDerek SmithSlant MagazineDerek SmithThe film frequently falls back on the stately demeanor of countless other historical biopics and period pieces. Read our review.
- 50The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloThe A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloOnce 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.
- 50The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungThe Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungPrecious little is revealed and one is left with the feeling that the material needed a different kind of treatment to illuminate its protagonists.
- 40The Observer (UK)Simran HansThe Observer (UK)Simran HansDebicki (The Tale, Widows) is wonderful as Woolf, a wry and solemn observer, but the rest of the film is all too literal.
- 30The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisThe New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisVita & Virginia takes a passionate, real-life affair between two enormously gifted writers and proceeds to throttle the life out of it.