Director: Tina Gharavi

Stars: Hayley Bennett, Lily Allen, Timothy Spall, Elyas M’Barek, Jack Whitehall, Jennifer Saunders

Set in 1910, this Virginia Woolf adaptation (the clue is in the title) charts a young woman’s efforts to make her own way in a suffocating patriarchal environment. Hayley Bennett is Katharine Hilbery, the daughter of a wealthy Hampstead couple. Her father, Mr Hilbery (Spall), is pressurising her into marrying her drippy childhood friend William (Whitehall). Katharine’s determination to avoid marriage, eschew domestication, and become an astronomer is strengthened when she meets spirited suffragette Mary Hatchet (Allen). Also encouraging is new acquaintance, working class editor Ralph Datchett (M’Barek), who is also helping her mother Mrs Hilbery (Saunders) with a family biography she is writing. Woolf later regarded her novel as flat and the film similarly suffers from a middlebrow tone, despite some shaky handheld camerawork during scenes of high drama, and a score that uses thrusting techno and ambient music to underline Katharine’s forward-looking nature. There is a lot to fit into a ninety-minute running time and the picture struggles to accommodate Katharine’s development as well as the broader social context. Bennett is a likeably doughty heroine, but Spall deserves better than the fusty character he is given here. Filmed in the north-east, the picture makes good use of its Beamish locations, and Whitburn singer Nadine Shah turns up as a singing suffragette.

David Willoughby

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