What do you do when your drama about a mentally troubled single mom isn’t well received at film festivals? If you’re Dustin Lance Black, you re-cut it and brand it as a dark comedy.
What’s Wrong With Virginia?, which was written and directed by Black, was first shown in 2010, and critics found plenty wrong with it. Jennifer Connelly stars as Virginia, an “unhinged” woman who’s having an affair with her small Southern town’s Mormon sheriff turned politician (Ed Harris). Now the film has been edited, retitled as simply Virginia, and given a quirky soundtrack for the new trailer.
While the synopsis says Virginia is a “funny, touching drama that looks at the American Dream and what it takes to keep it together,” Brad Brevet of RopeofSilicon says of the original version, “it doesn’t play as comical as much as it is tragic.” Either the film underwent some pretty significant changes, or the trailer is wildly misleading. Virginia opens in select theaters on May 18.
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