Gemma Arterton and Eva Green to star in Virginia Woolf lesbian romance
Gemma Arterton and Eva Green are set to star in a new film about Virgina Woolf’s lesbian romance.
Vita and Virginia will focus on the relationship between the twentieth century author and her fellow novelist Vita Sackville-West.
According to the Guardian Arterton is cast as Sackville-West, while Green will take up the role of Woolf, with Chanya Button directing.
Arterton, who made her debut in the adaptation of St Trinian’s, is also due to appear in the upcoming wartime romcom Their Finest. Green is known for her roles in Casino Royale and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.
While Woolf married her husband Leonard in 1912, she later developed a relationship with Sackville-West, who was also married, after first meeting her in 1922.
Their relationship continued into the early 1930s and inspired Woolf’s 1928 novel Orlando.
Speaking of their relationship, Nigel Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West’s son, said the book was a “most charming love letter”.
“The effect of Vita on Virginia is all contained in Orlando,” he continued. “The longest and most charming love letter in literature, in which she explores Vita, weaves her in and out of the centuries.”
Speaking of Sackville-West’s response to the novel, he added: “She loved it. Virginia by her genius had provided Vita with a unique consolation for having been born a girl, for her exclusion from her inheritance, for her father’s death earlier that year.
“The book, for her, was not simply a brilliany masque or pageant. It was a memorial mass.”
The film, which was announced last July, will be an adaptation of the play by Eileen Aitkins.
