Elizabeth Debicki & Gemma Arterton Are on Fire in Vita and Virginia Trailer

Finally, the trailer for the film about the years-long love affair between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West is here. And it was worth the wait.

Tracy E. Gilchrist

Tracy E. Gilchrist is the VP of Editorial and Special Projects at equalpride. A media veteran, she writes about the intersections of LGBTQ+ equality and pop culture. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of The Advocate and the first feminism editor for the 55-year-old brand. In 2017, she launched the company's first podcast, The Advocates. She is an experienced broadcast interviewer, panel moderator, and public speaker who has delivered her talk, "Pandora's Box to Pose: Game-changing Visibility in Film and TV," at universities throughout the country.

Read Full Bio

Tracy E. Gilchrist

April 16 2019 3:00 PM EST

Sorry to interrupt...
But we wanted to take a moment to thank you for reading. Your support makes original LGBTQ+ reporting possible. Help us hold Trump accountable.

One-time Monthly

$19.67 $50 Other

$5 $19.67 $50

Period pieces about queer women were big in 2018 with The Favourite, Collette, and Lizzie. And 2019 promises to continue with that trend now that the long-awaited trailer for Vita and Virginia, about the years-long love affair between Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf, has finally dropped. Additionally, the film has been set with a release date of July 5.

From director Chanya Button, Vita and Virginia stars Elizabeth Debicki (Widows, The Night Manager) as the great modernist, feminist writer Virginia Woolf and Gemma Arterton (who executive-produced the film) as poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West.

Replete with feminist treatises, alternately furtive and long-held looks, lingering touches, and the click-clack of the typewriter, Vita and Virginia appears as though it will be catnip for literary-minded queer women.

"I have the appetite to know you better," Vita says at one point, later bemoaning having loved someone for years who couldn't fully commit.

Based on the love letters Vita and Virginia penned to one another for years, the story also focuses on how Vita became the muse for Virginia's epic novel Orlando, about a truly gender-fluid aristocrat over centuries.

The film costars Isabella Rossellini, Rupert Penry-Jones, Peter Ferdinando, and Call the Midwife star Emerald Fennell (who was executive producer and head writer for the current season of Killing Eve).