Review by Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Tina Gharavi
Starring: Haley Bennett, Timothy Spall, Jennifer Saunders, Jack Whitehall, Sally Phillips, Lily Allen, Elyas M'Barek
As is the vogue of Lee Cronin's The Mummy, the title of Tina Gharavi (director) and Justine Waddell's (screenwriter) Virginia Woolf's Night & Day firmly explicates the film's textual authority, and who are we to disregard such a boldly possessive statement? Mind you, Woolf's contemporaries weren't nearly as reverent, with E.M. Forster dismissing the 1919 novel Virginia Woolf's Night & Day is based on by cattily stating he preferred Woolf's previous work, while Katherine Mansfield devastatingly referred to the tome as a "lie in the soul" (I feel the same way about the books of Richard Osman, Kath). In her imperial diaries, even the author herself referred to it as "flat" (I haven't read it myself, sorry. Usually, I make the effort, but this week my reading has been greedily devoted to the millennial sleaze of Jennette McCurdy's 'Half His Age' - good luck adapting that as a film!). Contemporary scholars, as they are wont to do, make claims for Night and Day's validity, suggesting that the book needs "critical salvation." Have Gharavi and Waddell come to the rescue?
We open in 1910, with our star gazing protagonist Katharine (Haley Bennett) taking a nocturnal swim in the family lake. Staring up at the navy firmament she picks out constellations, naming them as they burn from light years away. A free spirit who is compromised, she sneaks back into the homestead as her parents (played by Timothy Spall and active supporter of fox hunting Jennifer Saunders) fuss before going to bed. British films with a recognisable ensemble cast often have the lurid tang of pantomime as it is, and Virginia Woolf's Night & Day leans into the vibe as Katherine fumbles her telescope and it falls out of her window and lands on the ledge of her parents' window below, so she comically dangles herself half out the room upside down to retrieve it: on the marital bed, a Jack Russel makes a quizzical expression. The first scenes establish a knockabout tone, which would be fine and dandy, yet the vibe doesn't quite gel with the big and important themes which Virginia Woolf's Night & Day attempts to present as the film, and Katharine's struggle against astronomical gatekeeping, continues.
Speaking of dandy, Jack Whitehall shows up as a potential suitor for Katharine. Whitehall plays a would-be poet in the bumbling mode of Hugh Grant which will forevermore characterise British films angling for an international audience. Look, I like Jack Whitehall in things. I think he's alright, you know. And in this he elicits sympathy as a character just as much caught up in the cultural expectations of Edwardian society as Katharine is. Her father is keen for Katharine to marry Whitehall, but she would rather keep her powder dry to pursue her love of astronomy. Katharine's resolve is emboldened by a feline cousin, Cyril (Misia Butler), who occasionally turns up to urge her to "follow your heart" and suchlike. The stars don't align though: after a cross dressed goose chase across a lovingly studio-rendered period London, Katharine sneaks into the AGM of an extremely pompous astronomy society disguised as a man. As she enters, irl Rowling apologist Frances Barber, playing a brilliant yet inconveniently female astrologist who will also duly pop up later to offer Katharine further homilies, is violently refused entry for attempting to invade an apparently safe male space. This is "a serious institution" for "serious men," the silver haired and be-jowled uncs chortle and jeer.
It's all about as subtle as the Hubble Space Telescope, and to emphasise the theme, Katharine falls in with a group of agit-prop suffragettes (headed by the, annoyingly, good Lily Allen), a sub-plot with more potential than the inexorable pseudo-romance narrative which Katharine begins to share with hunky biographer Elyas M'Barek. As is the rather sweet and organic romance between Whitehall's William and some cousin or another: we see them fall in love in the background, filling out the world of the film. As the patriarchal pater, Spall is mainly required to look disgruntled and occasionally lose his shit when his daughter does anything remotely independent or modern, while mum Saunders makes profound speeches at get togethers. Perhaps fittingly in a film where the central character ponders the infinite - we "don't understand our place in the universe" - Virginia Woolf's Night & Day doesn’t half go big (there is a moment where, while singing carols in a church, Allen is loudly off-key, and it is positioned as a moment of cheeky emancipation).
In need of a second act call to action, Cyril turns up again at Christmas break and is gnomically wise, but the problem is that he turns out to be a homosexual. His father calls him out over the turkey for being a "nancy boy," which causes Cyril to rush out of the house and into the grounds where he suddenly has a heart attack and dies (the irony of all that "follow your heart" rhetoric ☹). In Woolf's original book, Cyril was a rampant heterosexual who "had lived for the last four years with a woman who was not his wife, who had borne him two children, and was now about to bear him another," so it is awesome that Virginia Woolf's Night & Day reconfigures the character's sexuality in order for him to die as a sacrifice enabling Katharine's actualisation and heteronormative destiny (the ending involves her sharing a kiss with M'Barek - I would say spoiler but come on). Virginia Woolf's Night & Day is pleasant enough, and Bennet is quite charming, but like the night sky on a misty evening, the overall effect is patchy. A final note: despite a good thrust of the dialogue predicated upon the expanse of space/time and the vast mysteries of the universe, no one once mentions aliens.
Virginia Woolf's Night & Day is in UK/ROI cinemas from June 19th.
