What does the work of a modernist look like before they became one? Read Virginia Woolf's Edwardian novel Night and Day and you might get the measure of it.
A tale of women's suffrage and the complexities of marriage versus self-actualisation, it deals with a roster of cutting-edge topics for its 1919 publication, yet is missing the experimental style that would later define Woolf's work as one of the most important writers of the 20th century. A self-declared minor work in her oeuvre, it has been rediscovered and given the modern edge Woolf herself thought it lacked by director Tina Gharavi and screenwriter Justine Waddell, decidedly reclaiming the writer's authorship in their new film, Virginia Woolf's Night & Day.
Hayley Bennett is Katharine 'Kit' Hilbery, a whip-smart young woman with her head in the stars. While nightswimming under clear skies, she has an epiphany when she spots a solar system winking at her: there's a way to measure the depth and breadth of the universe.
The pursuit of this 'cosmic yardstick' sees Kit reject the advances of foppish poet William (Jack Whitehall), much to the disappointment of her conservative father (Timothy Spall) and frustrated creative mother (Jennifer Saunders), but entirely to the delight of her kindly cousin Cyril (Misia Butler) and suffragette contemporary Mary Datchet (popstar-turned-actress Lily Allen). Her application to Cambridge University to refine her self-taught talents is a tentative gamble that hangs over this episodic tale, highlighting the grossly-unfair gender politics of the period that still echo on to the present.
Often misconstrued as a dark and maudlin author, Woolf's humor is brought to the fore here. Good stretches of Gharavi's Night & Day sparkle with wit and color, with Bennett's forthwith heroine standing as a granite-strong presence for Whitehall's endearingly pathetic verses to bounce off nicely, and Spall's flustered incredulity at his daughter's unruliness allows him to exercise a great blend of farce and pathos.
It's always a pleasure to see Jennifer Saunders getting to play an eccentric, and she's in turn bolstered by Sally Phillips as a scene-stealing lady-at-lunch reminding everyone of the status quo. Barbed yet gentle, there's plenty of warmth here that make it the ideal tonic to the recent glut of bad-feeling horror that has set the multiplexes ablaze.
The frontlining of Kit as the one central character certainly helps emphasize this as a 2026 adaptation, having the rest of the cast focused on in the book instead revolve around her. Simon Goff's poppy score adds an anachronistic edge that doesn't quite reach the ear-catching mania of Charli xcx's work on Wuthering Heights or the top 10 bangers you'd find in Bridgerton, but the light use of a modern soundscape here is a pleasant addition. Add to that a refreshingly unmoored visual style from Sebastian Edschmid; there's a nice focus on faces that feels more grounded than you might usually find in this sort of period fare, particularly letting Bennett flex her facial muscles to maximum effect.
A series of fine locations around north east England are also given the spotlight, uprooting what might ordinarily be a London-centric shoot and finding authentic gems in an underserved region; much of the pomp and circumstance of the academic world is brought to musty life at Newcastle's Lit(erary) and Phil(osophical Society), and Allen's suffragette headquarters is housed in between the two storey-tall pistons the still fully-functioning Ryhope Engines Museum in Sunderland. There's diversity and personality to the world of Night & Day that make it a pleasure to spend time in.
As for the film's unapologetic politics, it hits agreeable beats harder and harder as it reaches its reconciliatory climax. Touching on queer romances snuffed out by prejudice and the Sisyphean struggle to be taken seriously as a woman in STEM, Night & Day sports a good heart that makes its case clearly and with little controversy. There's maybe the sense that some of Woolf's subversive edge is missing from Bennett's full-throated monologue that caps off the drama, leaving its final notes undeniably true, if a little too predictable.
Yet perhaps that's Night & Day's ultimate honesty, a refinement of an idea Woolf put forward 100 years ago that still speaks today in similar terms. There might not be much to tantalise or subvert like Sally Potter's adaptation of Orlando, nor to extrapolate and explore like Nicole Kidman did playing Woolf herself in The Hours, yet Night & Day does not set its sights as such.
Frothy and funny, Gharavi's adaptation of a lesser-known work is a genial revival of the towering author's underappreciated kinder side.
The film opens Friday, 19 June, in UK movie theaters, via West End Films.