Virginia Woolf may be one of those authors you've noticed but never been curious enough to read whilst the then more popular Vita Sackville-West isn't even on the bookshelf.
This film sheds some of light on them both during the British Interwar period when only heterosexuality could be expressed in public whilst same sex relationships took place behind closed doors.
It's a relatively low budget film focussing, mostly indoors, upon the relationship between two female authors with a Downton Abbey or Brideshead Revisited feel to backdrops at Knole House or Bloomsbury in London , a story about angst and surging passion within the British white aristocratic and middle classes.
Both characters have huge and complex back stories, so this movie could only focus on one story, being how and why Virginia Woolf came to write Orlando.
This movie launches in the same week as Pride Week 2019, a salutatory reminder just how hypocritical the British can be when it comes to their attitudes towards same sex relationships, identity and the expression of them at a time when Populism is on the rise again.
If you prefer watching adults prancing around in capes dropping American cliches in front of big budget CGI backdrops then this movie isn't for you, but if you are curious about English literature, it's context in 1920's London and want a grownup story then this even-paced movie is.
I left more curious and less afraid now to pick up and read one of Woolf's books, perhaps Orlando, to contrast sexuality in the British 1920s and 2020s.
This film sheds some of light on them both during the British Interwar period when only heterosexuality could be expressed in public whilst same sex relationships took place behind closed doors.
It's a relatively low budget film focussing, mostly indoors, upon the relationship between two female authors with a Downton Abbey or Brideshead Revisited feel to backdrops at Knole House or Bloomsbury in London , a story about angst and surging passion within the British white aristocratic and middle classes.
Both characters have huge and complex back stories, so this movie could only focus on one story, being how and why Virginia Woolf came to write Orlando.
This movie launches in the same week as Pride Week 2019, a salutatory reminder just how hypocritical the British can be when it comes to their attitudes towards same sex relationships, identity and the expression of them at a time when Populism is on the rise again.
If you prefer watching adults prancing around in capes dropping American cliches in front of big budget CGI backdrops then this movie isn't for you, but if you are curious about English literature, it's context in 1920's London and want a grownup story then this even-paced movie is.
I left more curious and less afraid now to pick up and read one of Woolf's books, perhaps Orlando, to contrast sexuality in the British 1920s and 2020s.