Great piece from Adam Nicholson on the hagiographic sentimentality of The Hours, which:

relies for its effects on the myth of the agonised and finally crucified artist, in much the same way that films about Van Gogh and any of the Romantics have always done.

Nowhere in the Virginia Woolf of The Hours is there any sign of what I know to be the talkative, unforgivingly sharp, intellectual, witty, funny, joking, gossiping, deceitful woman that emerges in her letters. That sometimes malicious, often light-hearted person, endlessly curious about the world and other people, either interrogating them about the details of their lives or behaving suddenly and intimately with great warmth and tenderness towards children - none of that sheer variability of mind, temperament and person is allowed to appear in the film.