Yes, Virginia
2019 · 10m
Directed by Harvey Puttock
Genres: dark comedy, drama, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, surreal
Virginia says yes to everyone, gifted with granting wishes, until the bane of boons reveals the complex psyche beneath her unmagical circumstances.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The wish-granting setup feels like it's circling something darker than most shorts dare to go—the psyche beneath the magic is where it gets weird—but the film doesn't quite commit to its own subversion; it lands somewhere between dark comedy and cautionary tale without fully committing to either.
A formally accomplished meditation on the Faustian bargain of boundless generosity, with the surreal tone grounding itself in genuine character study; the editing moves with deliberate control between Virginia's public performance and private unraveling.
The decision to keep Virginia's wish-granting mundane and matter-of-fact—treating magic like bureaucracy—is what makes the final reckoning with her psychology land; it's that tonal flatness against the emotional crescendo that transforms a premise into something singular.
Reviews
The film systematically unravels Virginia's personality and the ravages of her gift on her and others' lives. Through magical realism, it objectively slices through the dizzying ways of complicated relationships, and in this particular case, emotionally manipulative ones.