This is one crazy film about a very crazy woman and
her oddball life. Virginia is a
functional paranoid schizophrenic who choses not to take any medication but
whose life is spiraling out of control as is this movie that tells her
story.
Virginia is an exasperating woman in her mid 30’s
living in a tawdry seaside resort town in Virginia Beach which she is
desperate to move out of. She is a
devoted mother to Emmett her teenage son who often has to switch roles with her
and become her carer when she goes off the deep end. She has been having an affair for the last 17
years with Richard the local Sheriff despite the fact he is a married man with
two children and is also a devoted Mormon.
Richard, with his addiction to having S & M sex whilst keeping on his Mormon ‘magic underwear’, is a hypocritical piece of work.
When Richard decides to run for State Senator he abruptly
ends the affair, which really tips Virginia over the edge. She has just been diagnosed with a serious
lung disorder but decides to ignore the advice given to her at the Clinic as
she has decided that her symptoms actually mean she is in fact pregnant. She pads out her dress to perpetuate the myth
and then goes around the small town telling anybody and everybody that the Sheriff is the father.
Meanwhile Emmett who was always told that Richard is
his father starts his own investigations to disprove that as he actually is in
love with Jessie, Richard’s daughter by his straight-laced wife. In fact they are so desperate to marry that
Emmett stages a robbery at the Fun Fair that he works so that they have enough
money to run away and get married.
Despite the presence of Jennifer Connolly and Ed
Harris who really do their best as Virginia and Richard, this rather confusing
movie just keeps going off on tangents and is frankly a mess. Especially sad as it is the directing debut
of the wonderful Oscar winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black who had based
this story on parts of his own life. And
the Executive Producer was none other than Gus Van Saint.
Evidently the movie was first shown at the Toronto
Film Festival where it had such a negative reception the whole thing was
re-edited including the title which originally was ‘What’s Wrong
With Virginia?’ To which I could answer
‘a lot’! Pity though.
★★★★★
★★★★★
