Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day review – dreamy adaptation reaches for the stars

This adaptation, written by Justine Waddell and directed by Iranian-born, Bafta-nominated Tina Gharavi, turns Virginia Woolf’s elusive novel into an unworldly fantasia. Beautifully designed and photographed, it is flavoured with a wistful, unexpectedly Germanic romanticism and places Woolf’s single glancing reference to astronomy at the centre of the heroine’s yearning.

The film removes Woolf’s supercilious condescension toward the newly educated lower and middle classes and refocuses the material as a sweet-natured drama performed with conviction by an all-star ensemble. It is not precisely Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day; perhaps it reads more like EM Forster’s or Ronald Firbank’s Night and Day.

Haley Bennett plays Katharine Hilbery, the headstrong only child of wealthy parents (Timothy Spall and Jennifer Saunders), burdened by the reputation of an illustrious poet and critic grandfather whose unwieldy biography her mother is trying to write.

virginia woolf, woolf adaptation, justine waddell, tina gharavi, haley bennett, timothy spall, jennifer saunders, astronomy, romanticism, ensemble cast