Why the ace up my sleeve loves V for Vendetta, and the limits of English for describing feelings

Photo from https://theplaylist.net/v-for-vendetta-science-fiction-20200730/ 

Why the ace up my sleeve loves V for Vendetta, and the limits of English for describing feelings

by Jen Davies, nerd

Nov 5, 2025

A lot of folks were introduced to Alan Moore through the movie versions of two visual novels, Watchmen and V for Vendetta. Me too. I have since been watching the free YouTube videos associated with Alan Moore’s BBC Maestro series recently released, highly recommend you look those up if you aspire to writing. I watched them because I admire V for Vendetta (both versions). V is extremely relevant in 2025 (see article above - Christian Nationalism is even scarier right now than it was), and there are so few film portrayals in science fiction (or other kinds of fiction) of asexual love that I have to take what little I can find. I blame the limits of the English language for the struggle writers have with describing the nuances of the human experience, especially feelings.

Dance-like performance through life

I saw V for Vendetta without knowing much about the writer. I knew a fair bit about UK history, and enough about Thatcherism that I recognized it when it showed up in the film. I thought the adapters did well to make fascism look a little more timeless, which was appropriate then and even more appropriate now. But I went to see it because I have respect for Natalie Portman’s work, and as a feminist I liked the idea that the main character was a woman - and I would see anything Hugo Weaving was in after he terrified us all as Mr. Smith in The Matrix movies. I also love it when an actor is forced to act through a mask or a huge amount of makeup. It came out in 2005 and I have since watched the film more years than not, on or around Nov. 5, so I know it fairly well.

Hugo Weaving was not the original actor cast as V. As I recall they had shot some astronomical amount of the movie, to just before the head shave, and there was struggling all around (no finger-pointing - it just wasn't working). No doubt Hugo’s name came up via the Wachowskis (who created The Matrix series and wrote this script), and he was available, and he was on an airplane from Australia to London the next day, as I recall from an interview. I remember Hugo has said in an interview that it was unusual for him not to have any prep time to get into a character's mindset, but that it may have helped the performance because he only had to V’s physicality to focus on - V lived in his behaviour. He had no time to worry about V’s inner life and the benefit was that we got his genuinely beautiful, dance-like or puppet-like performance. 

It's easy to forget a lot of the time that he's wearing a mask. It just becomes his face and at points I wonder if they have swapped masks with slightly different expressions (but no - it's the body language tricking our eyes). That's the first thing I love about the film portrayal of V, that his feelings are on clear display even though his face never changes. (Another great performance like this is Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky - I do not enjoy Tom’s work because in everything else he tries to act with his eyeballs, and can't. Also see Ron Perlman’s sensitive work despite pounds of prosthetics and makeup in the 80s TV show Beauty and the Beast, and his Hellboy films.) V’s motivations and thoughts aren't always obvious to us, but we always have a clear sense of what he is feeling because he wears it on his body. It's in his posture, in his level of animation, in the tilt of his head and in his gestures. We aren't accustomed to understanding someone that way, and I think it helps to bring us to V’s “side” because we have to watch his whole self and we listen more closely to nuances of voice without a mouth to follow. People IRL are often keeping our feelings out of our body language and voice because we are afraid we’ll be rejected or criticized - V has decided that others will accept his feelings, or they won't, and he can't be bothered by anyone until he meets Evey a second time and has to kidnap her (or she'll certainly be thrown in a gov’t prison the rest of her life). He isn't looking for the inconvenience of having another person in his space, but he finds her interesting and he appreciated the help.

Intimacy without the need for sex

The second thing I love about V is that he cares deeply about Evey, and shows his care for her (including in problematic ways) freely and mostly without embarrassment for it. The result is beautiful: V demonstrates love without ever being sexual with Evey, with cooking, teaching her things that were left out of her education, and letting her be in his space without restrictions (except the doors are locked at first). When he lets her leave the first time he prevents her from kissing him - he isn't interested in a kiss as a thank-you. When she returns they slow-dance (an intimate act) to celebrate the upcoming revolution and it doesn't feel sexual; it's warm, there is closeness, and (if you want to read sexual symbolism into it) he told earlier us it's his first time dancing to any of his music collection. By implication and symbolism, V has not previously been a sexual creature. This time he lets her kiss him (the mask) because he already loves her and now she has earned his trust as well. She has also demonstrated that she loves him back, by coming back - the kiss isn't just a thank-you, it's more, so it's genuine and that makes a kiss alright.

He shows us (and her) that he adores her without having to make their connection sexual, so of course he was devastated when he had to let her go - sadness made even worse because he had engineered her capacity to leave (yes, it was via torture so it's problematic, I'm aware). His heartbreak is real, and he pulls the mask off in private so we know that the original man (whoever he was) who still exists behind it is really hurting at losing her, not only the revolutionary (represented by the mask) who also shaped Evey into a revolutionary. He breaks the mirror to show us that his grief isn't only because Evey is a "mirror". It's about having realized that he was lonely, and having had a reminder of what companionship is like he is devastated to lose it again - but he loves her, so her freedom to choose matters more than his loneliness.

Acting with conviction 

When it seems like Evey might breach a boundary around intimacy (she is curious what he is like behind the mask), he asks her respect his mask and lack of personal history because (paraphrasing) it doesn't matter - the V she sees is who he is. That existential point of view is another thing I love about V: he is what he does. He talks about a lot of philosophy, but he also lives it. He keeps the words from the toilet paper scroll near his heart, and builds a shrine to their author. He loves deeply, and isn't ashamed of it. He doesn't bother to name how he feels about Evey until the end, because he is confident that she knows. He has always acted like himself, and he knows his final act is going to be to give her the choice to usher in a new world - if it isn't love to give choices, and one of them a whole new era if she wants it, I don't know what is.

In providing the freedom of choice at the end he is also seeking atonement for the wrong he felt like he had to do, torturing Evey to recreate for her something like the scenario that also enabled him to free himself of the fear that prevented him from taking action. He didn't know how else to set her free (of fear, and in a way that she wouldn't reveal his location). When he reveals that he was her torturer it's the one time we see and hear anxiety in V - in the rest of the film he shows no hesitation about anything. But as he puts on his gloves and welcomes Evey back into the Shadow Gallery his vocal pitch is higher, and he doesn't seem to know where to stand. He fidgets. He tries to give her space even while he wants to be close in case she needs support. He expects she will be angry, and we can see that he is uncertain about what will become of their relationship. He knows she wants to leave, she escaped once already, and that's why he felt like he had to “scrub” her of her fear (so he could unlock the doors without concern that she would give away his project). He did an awful thing that came from a genuine place of care, and he knows rejection is a possibility.

It can be hard to watch because his conviction leads V to do terrible things. But we could never say he acts in any wishy-washy ways. Everything V does is fully committed, with intent and full awareness of what the consequences are likely to be. It's a hard way to live one's life, so it's interesting to watch on a screen.

English needs Greek to describe the range of experiences that are love

The film starts with Evey’s voice over, talking about being unable to kiss an idea, and how she misses a man (who we know is V). I had forgotten that, and on rewatching the film for this essay I pondered it all the way through. V was barely a physical presence for Evey, and the most physical contact they shared was actually during the days during which he replicated his own torture experience for her - and we/she didn't know it was him at the time! The opening voiceover makes a point of a gendered and somewhat sexualized description - a woman’s voice expressing longing for a man she could not kiss - but there are different reasons we might want to kiss another person, looking through the lenses of the different kinds of love that humans experience. In particular in literature when we are stuck for words to describe love we go to the three most commonly used Greek expressions for love: eros (sexual desire), philia (affinity), and agape (affection).

How is eros (sexual love) addressed in V for Vendetta? There are at least two scenarios where it is going unfulfilled. First, thankfully, V foils the attempted gang rape of Evey - so sex is framed right from the beginning of the film as something scary or dangerous. The second is Gordon’s admission that he is attracted to men, not women like Evey, so the sex Gordon wants to have is framed as risky or unattainable (because to attain it he could end up in prison or dead). The film tells us pretty clearly: this is probably not the type of love Evey was talking about at the beginning.

Philia (affinity or brotherly love) is also addressed at least twice. There is importance in names, and when she is introduced as Evey, V says: “Of course you are.” V’s name is contained in hers, so there is instant affinity. Later, V goes to significant lengths to make Evey his equal in courage, a fellow ‘brother in arms’ through shared experience, and while she is understandably angry at having been tortured she tells him later she appreciates what the shift in herself has done for freeing her. But could Evey be talking about kinship with her opening voiceover? It doesn't fit with the tone of the opening speech.

Agape, or affection, is most likely what’s addressed in the opening voiceover. Evey says she misses (ie, longs for) the man, and Greek agape also refers to the longing we feel for the dead. Kisses can also be a sign of affection depending on how they are delivered, and the only ones we see in the film are affectionate rather than sexual. Her first kiss for V comes only after her old self dies (she would "rather die behind the chemical sheds" than reveal any information - so V lets her go, and she returns at the end). Her second kiss for V is after he is actually dead. Clearly this is what's addressed in the opening voiceover.

Affection might be the closest of the Greek words for love that fits the experience of asexual love. If you're not familiar with 2SLGBTQIA+ terminology, here's a helpful primer: https://www.canada.ca/en/women-gender-equality/free-to-be-me/2slgbtqi-plus-glossary.html 

Folks who are “ace” experience love, something like affection (English is limited), but "ace" folks tend only to experience romantic or sexual attraction in particular circumstances, or not at all. Those who identify as aromantic (“a-ro”) almost never experience romantic or sexual attraction of any kind. Those who identify as romantic aces do experience romantic attraction, but rarely and when they are in a relationship with someone who they care about - the relationship happens before the attraction. Sexual attraction is still only a maybe even when there is romantic attraction - which doesn't mean there is no sex in a relationship where one party is ace! As in any relationship where at least one party is sexually attracted to another, engaging in sexual behaviour (or not) is negotiated. (Netflix and chill really might just be Netflix... or it might not! It has to be discussed.)

All we know about V’s history is that he had some identity that the gov't didn't like (and the gov't had a long list of identities they didn't like). We do know that his prison cell neighbour who inspired him to destroy the facility via her autobiography identified as a lesbian, so there is a hint that V’s sexual identity is not-straight. While we do not get into V’s and Evey’s heads, V’s verbal and nonverbal negotiations with Evey tell us that he would prefer to keep their love firmly in the nonsexual realm, but he becomes open to her wishes when he trusts her more (ie, the kiss on the mask when she returns at the end).

It's pretty rare in movies, and in science fiction/fantasy, to see an asexual love story. Tron: Ares could have pulled it off but they decided to sidestep a romantic subplot entirely, and it was refreshing to do that. In movies romantic and/or sexy scenes are expected because most people experience some romantic and/or sexual attraction, so in well-written stories they provide information about the characters' feelings. Sometimes those scenes are just there to sell tickets. And those romantic and/or sexy scenes are fine, but it's really nice when a movie is able to give us a different way of looking at love. Another good one is the movie Drive (Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan) - two of the main characters develop terrible affection that they can't act on, and while I'm sure the characters would have acted on it if circumstances allowed... they didn't! So we get a somewhat asexual love story (but lots of violence, consider yourselves warned).

#vforvendetta #rememberremember #november5 #5thofnovember #antifascist 

#asexual #ace #asexualromance @lforlloyd.bsky.social

Resources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta_(film)

And

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love