{"id":5129,"date":"2026-06-16T12:16:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T11:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/16\/virginia-woolfs-night-and-day-review-a-decent-ensemble-cast-carries-this-staid-adaptation\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T12:16:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T11:16:00","slug":"virginia-woolfs-night-and-day-review-a-decent-ensemble-cast-carries-this-staid-adaptation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/16\/virginia-woolfs-night-and-day-review-a-decent-ensemble-cast-carries-this-staid-adaptation\/","title":{"rendered":"Virginia Woolf&#8217;s Night and Day review: A decent ensemble cast carries this staid adaptation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<br \/><\/p>\n<div data-placement=\"Body\">\n<div class=\"rating\" data-testid=\"rating\">\n<div class=\"rating__values rating__values--no-rate\" aria-label=\"rating\"><span class=\"sr-only\">A star rating of 3 out of 5.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>A novel of two worlds becomes a fitfully enjoyable but diffuse film in this Virginia Woolf adaptation. Woolf\u2019s second novel was a transitional work, poised elusively between Victorian literary conventions and the experiments of her later works.<\/p>\n<p>Director Tina Gharavi\u2019s take flirts with modern stylings but ultimately pares down Woolf\u2019s tricky doorstop to a somewhat staid heritage comedy drama of female empowerment, with a largely decent ensemble cast carrying much of its appeal.<\/p>\n<p>Haley Bennett plays Katharine Hilbery, a young woman dreaming of the stars in 1910. Raised by well-to-do parents (Jennifer Saunders, Timothy Spall), Katharine \u2013 or Kit, as she\u2019s often known \u2013 is expected to marry would-be poet William Rodney (Jack Whitehall).<\/p>\n<p>But she loves astronomy and longs to study at the University of Cambridge, much to the consternation of her fusty father and the academic establishment of the time. Duly, Kit dresses as a man to gatecrash lectures at the Royal Astronomical Society with her gay cousin Cyril (Misia Butler); meanwhile, she develops a crush on Ralph Denham (Elyas M\u2019Barek), a writer helping Kit\u2019s mother write a biography.<\/p>\n<div class=\"consent-placeholder consent-placeholder--custom-consent mb-md\" data-testid=\"consent-placeholder\">\n<h4 class=\"consent-placeholder__heading section-heading-1 heading-4\">Want to see this content?<\/h4>\n<p class=\"consent-placeholder__text mb-0 mt-0\">This page contains content provided by Google reCAPTCHA. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as Google reCAPTCHA may use cookies and other technologies. To view this content, choose &#8216;Accept and continue&#8217; to allow Google reCAPTCHA and its required purposes.<\/p>\n<p><button type=\"button\" class=\"consent-placeholder__button button--adaptive mt-sm\"><\/p>\n<p>Accept and continue<\/p>\n<p><\/button><\/div>\n<p>The stage is set for a tangled semi-romance, mounted against a backdrop of suffrage and slowly changing times. While the web of Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream-ish relationships in Woolf\u2019s knotty novel becomes over-simplified and sketchy here, her themes of gender inequality and female self-determination are winningly conveyed through Bennett\u2019s lead turn.<\/p>\n<p>The Widow Clicquot star brims with appealing energy and intellectual curiosity as she gazes at the cosmos from a nighttime swim in Hampstead Ponds or marvels at the spectacle of Halley\u2019s comet. \u201cShow me how big you are,\u201d she says to the sky, daring to dream bigger than society would have her do.<\/p>\n<p>She cuts a dash as she tears across London in a suit to an astronomy gathering, too, and her rage as she faces down sexist opposition from Cambridge dons registers tangibly.<\/p>\n<p>Whitehall adds wry support as the patronising fop with an inflated sense of his own literary abilities, not unlike Mathew Baynton\u2019s Thomas in BBC sitcom Ghosts.<\/p>\n<p>Even if the role is hardly a stretch for an actor who made \u201cposh pillock\u201d his default mode in student comedy Fresh Meat and elsewhere, Whitehall brings a dash of welcome levity to a film that proves a little too buttoned-up and didactic for laughs elsewhere.<\/p>\n<div class=\"consent-placeholder consent-placeholder--custom-consent mb-xl\" data-testid=\"consent-placeholder\">\n<h4 class=\"consent-placeholder__heading section-heading-1 heading-4\">Want to see this content?<\/h4>\n<p class=\"consent-placeholder__text mb-0 mt-0\">This page contains content provided by YouTube. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as YouTube may use cookies and other technologies. To view this content, choose &#8216;Accept and continue&#8217; to allow YouTube and its required purposes.<\/p>\n<p><button type=\"button\" class=\"consent-placeholder__button button--adaptive mt-sm\"><\/p>\n<p>Accept and continue<\/p>\n<p><\/button><\/div>\n<p>Butler acquits himself well as another man in Kit\u2019s close circle, albeit one rewritten from the novel and saddled with a thumpingly clumsy plot twist. M\u2019Barek makes less of an impression as Denham, whose relationship with Kit develops so little on-screen traction that you wonder why screenwriter Justine Waddell \u2013 a former actor with form in period dramas herself \u2013 did not find ways to excise him altogether.<\/p>\n<p>Kit\u2019s parents never come to life, either: Saunders barely makes an impression, while Spall is cast to type as the jowly \u201cpapa\u201d who huffs about \u201cfemale bloody lunacy\u201d and seems to sport a cigar as a vital extension of his anatomy. And woe betide anyone who touches his newspaper.<\/p>\n<p>The heritage drama essentials of handsome production design and costumes are well-served, however, and Gharavi weaves in a few flashes of dynamism. Bustling handheld camerawork helps to energise a key street-set sequence, while a pulsing synth score provides warmly luminous accompaniment to Kit\u2019s yearnings.<\/p>\n<p>A flame-haired Lily Allen performs solidly as suffragette Mary Datchet, presented as a kind of mouthpiece for progressive thinking. And in another pop flourish, Mercury-nominated indie maverick Nadine Shah\u2019s singing cameo offers an all-too-fleeting hint of the gusto and passion Night and Day needed to properly loosen the ties of genre tradition.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Virginia Woolf&#8217;s Night and Day is released in UK cinemas on Friday 19 June.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Check out more of our <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/movies\/\">Film<\/a> coverage or visit our <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/tv\/tv-listings\/\">TV Guide<\/a> and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/streaming-guide\/\">Streaming Guide<\/a> to find out what&#8217;s on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to <a target=\"_blank\" title=\"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/audio\/podcasts\/\" href=\"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/audio\/podcasts\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-auth=\"NotApplicable\" data-linkindex=\"3\">The Radio Times Podcast<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/movies\/virginia-woolfs-night-and-day-review\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A star rating of 3 out of 5. A novel of two worlds becomes a fitfully enjoyable but diffuse film in this Virginia Woolf adaptation. Woolf\u2019s second novel was a transitional work, poised elusively between Victorian literary conventions and the experiments of her later works. Director Tina Gharavi\u2019s take flirts with modern stylings but ultimately [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2026\/05\/06.12.24AHM-1456-d3f9b13.jpg?resize=1200%2C630","fifu_image_alt":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[3876,8335,416,566,8333,8334,1048,95,8336,1636,1637],"class_list":["post-5129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-adaptation","tag-carries","tag-cast","tag-day","tag-decent","tag-ensemble","tag-night","tag-review","tag-staid","tag-virginia","tag-woolfs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}