Movie Nation by Roger Moore

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.

Chicago Tribune by Katie Walsh

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.

Film Threat by Lorry Kikta

The film is truly gorgeous and interesting for fans of literature.

Variety by Jessica Kiang

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.

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

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.

The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young

Precious little is revealed and one is left with the feeling that the material needed a different kind of treatment to illuminate its protagonists.

The A.V. Club by Mike D'Angelo

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.

Slant Magazine by Derek Smith

The film frequently falls back on the stately demeanor of countless other historical biopics and period pieces. Read our review.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Martha Schabas

It’s light research, worn heavily, and the romance that ensues feels just as about as studied and slight.

San Francisco Chronicle by Carla Meyer

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.

Screen Daily by Wendy Ide

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.

CineVue by Joe Walsh

Vita and Virginia is a remarkably chaste and safe film given its wealthy subject matter.

The Observer (UK) by Simran Hans

Debicki (The Tale, Widows) is wonderful as Woolf, a wry and solemn observer, but the rest of the film is all too literal.

The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis

Vita & Virginia takes a passionate, real-life affair between two enormously gifted writers and proceeds to throttle the life out of it.