Sweet Virginia gets lost in the dark

Murder and its aftermath not enough to sustain this directionless narrative

Just so you know what you’re getting into, Sweet Virginia isn’t too sweet. And it takes place in Alaska (though filmed in British Columbia), where we open with a multiple homicide in a smalltown diner.

Bernadette (Rosemarie DeWitt) loses her husband of 18 years in the melee, and turns to local motel manager Sam (Jon Bernthal) for solace. This is particularly easy since they were already having a quiet affair. Even with her husband gone, they try to be circumspect about it.

The other grieving widow of note is Lila (Imogen Poots), who is astonished and more than a little angry to discover that her husband left her nothing but debts.

Then there’s Elwood (Christopher Abbott) — the murderer. He’s more or less passing through, but checks into the motel and strikes up a weird friendship with Sam. When they’re not hanging out we see Elwood cleaning his gun, exercising, picking fights and having emotionless sex with a prostitute.

Sweet Virginia was written by brothers Paul and Benjamin China, and landed on the 2012 Black List, a roster of promising, not-yet-produced screenplays that has since given us movies both great (Arrival, Whiplash) and merely so-so (Draft Day, The Judge).

But as directed by Jamie M. Dagg, this story moves in fits and starts, with secondary characters

(a cop, noisy Sam’s hotel young guest, co-worker, the town might etc.), so as underdeveloped well not be there they at all. Ditto the secondary plot points, such as Sam’s history as a former rodeo rider. That one even gets its own dream sequence, but ultimately adds no more to the story than does the scenic mountain backdrop.

Meanwhile, the central theme of murder and its aftermath is interesting for as far as it goes, but that’s not enough to carry the picture.

Sweet Virginia would clearly like to stake out some territory on the dark dramatic edges of the cinematic map, but ends up a little lost.