LOVE amongst the upper-class is portrayed in a true-life film to be screened by Keighley Film Club on December 17. Vita and Virginia is based on the love letters between Vita Sackville West and Virginia Woolf, part of the Bloomsbury literary set in London in the 1920s.

Vita is the brash aristocratic wife of diplomat Harold Nicholson who refuses to be constrained by her marriage, defiantly courting scandal through her affairs with women. When she meets the troubled Virginia she is immediately attracted to the famed novelists eccentric genius and enigmatic allure. So begins an intense passionate relationship marked by an all consuming desire, intellectual gamesmanship and destructive jealousy.

Club spokesman Alan Watkinson said the affair left both women profoundly transformed, and was the source of one of renowned writer Woolf’s greatest works, Orlando.

Alan said: “It also tested to near destruction Vita’s marriage to Nicholson. Reviewers offer the following comments, ‘the film actually makes the audience a participant in the affair’; ‘strong material at its foundation begs to be explored’; and ‘Atherton and Debicki gave outstanding performances and their screen chemistry is palpable’.

The film was nominated at the Toronto Film Festival in 2018. The film, based on a play written in 1992 by Eileen Atkin, is directed by Chanya Button (Fire, Frog/Robot).

It stars Gemma Atherton (Murder Mystery, Zoe) as Vita and Elizabeth Debicki (Widows, Burnt Orange Heresy) as Virginiah. See the film at Keighley Picture House, North Street, on December 17 at 6pm. Doors open at 5.35pm.