Vita et Laura

Vita Sackville West is better known as Virginia Woolf’s lover and the inspiration for Woolf’s playful novel on gender, Orlando. But she was a well known novelist in her time and the love of her life was not Woolf, but a volatile socialite, Violet Trefusis. Or was the love of her life really her husband, Harold? Portrait of a Marriage, based on her son’s book, essentially deals with the Vita-Violet-Harold triangle and comes to no conclusion. Or maybe I dozed off because it is one of those dull, stodgy British teleserials of which I have had my fill. But it did boast a very good performance from Janet McTeer as Vita which partially salvaged the film. Her portrayal is neither butch nor feminine (clearly Violet is the delicious feminine in their relationship). Instead it’s truly androgynous and suggestive of the sexual slipperiness of the Bloomsbury crowd, many of who were in heterosexual marriages while conducting a range of relationships. The androgynous quality of the performance is somewhat similar to that of Tilda Swinton’s portrayal of Orlando though McTeer is clearly portraying a real person while Swinton’s strangeness fits the mythical Orlando like the proverbial glove. Orlando itself is a singular visual concoction with terrific visuals in which Violet appears as the temperamental Russian princess, Sasha. The fictional tale, which is much more than the Vita-Violet/Orlando-Sasha tale, is far superior to the real one which is perhaps of moderate interest only to those who follow the private lives of writers. Maybe it could have been redeemed by Sackville-West’s travels to Persia, her novels, the literary milieu of the time and the like but as it stands, it wasn’t very interesting.

I haven’t seen too many films of late, perhaps that accounted for my finding Portrait of a Marriage uninteresting. But I did see Little Jerusalem on SBS yesterday and while I am still a little undecided on how I feel about it, it held my attention. Karin Albou, who also directed The Wedding Song, often focuses on the Jewish and Muslim communities of North Africa.  Little Jerusalem is largely concentrated on the Tunisian Orthodox Jewish community in France and the tugs and pulls of the larger world, in particular and surprisingly the philosophical world, on its heroine, Laura. But most of all, like The Wedding Song, it brings out the sensual and tactile elements of female life and the tender, prickly nature of feminine relationships. Albou’s films are not flawless but they do have a mesmerising quality about them.

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Nest week, I hope to be able to continue the granddad’s Savitri series.