Guinevere (1999)

Worth watching

I had the unbelievable good fortune to stumble upon Guinevere, starring Sarah Polley and Stephen Rea, this week. I really enjoyed this movie.

Polley plays Harper, a young, insecure woman on the brink of attending Harvard Law School. At her sister's wedding, she meets Connie Fitzpatrick, an aging wedding photographer. He strikes up an easy rapport with her, guessing quickly that she's not cut out for law school and flattering her with a compliment or two. Connie also slyly accommodates her request not to be photographed in the traditional wedding shots, but he surprises her with a beautiful portrait that he took (featuring only her) in an unguarded moment. When Harper visits Connie to thank him for the portrait, he invites her to stick around with him and learn about . . . art.

Before she knows it, Harper is chucking the idea of law school and moving in with her new lover. The two seem oddly happy together, though Harper's own low self-esteem and Connie's need for adulation are more than a little self-destructive. Harper soon discovers that she's one in a string of Connie's many "pupils" - all young, all insecure, all taken in by his talk of art and his Irish accent. Connie has fed them all the same lines, tried to inspire all of them to create art, called them all his "Guinevere." Despite that, however, Harper decides Connie's a better bet than her own dysfunctional family of backbiting lawyers. As the viewer knows from the start, Connie and Harper must eventually have a sad parting.

The film comes full circle four years later, when news that Connie has been stricken with illness reaches his former loves. The women all gather (without malice, no less) to say goodbye, and, strangely enough, most of them have gone on to become accomplished artists - painters, photographers, etc.

I thought this movie was very interesting and very well-done. The characters are not always likable - Harper, jealous of her older sister's close relationship with her father, runs to Connie as a substitute; Connie, though an excellent photographer, is also an old lech with too much of a taste for girl-flesh; Harper's family is made out to be an intelligent but thoroughly hatable group whose main characterization is their vocation - law.

Rea and Polley hold the film deftly in ther capable hands, and their performances are wonderful. I'm beginning to really love Polley. I thought she was stunning in My Life Without Me and I LOVED her in The Weight of Water. Jean Smart provides a biting turn as Harper's mother.

Though there is a little nudity, some sexual content, and plenty of profanity in this one, I thought it was very much worth watching. August 31, 2008

A Must See If Crushing On Sarah Polley

Sarah Polley fans, especially ones going all the way back to "Ramona", are generally big-time "Guinevere" (1999) fans simply because it is the film in which she peaked physically. And Director Audrey Wells picked up on this during casting, seeing in Polley (at that time of her life) someone physically perfect to play her heroine Harper Sloane. Wells needed a young woman who simply glowed in front of the camera, whose face looked better "without" make-up, and who projected both innocence and restlessness. With Polley she also got a bonus, one of the most talented actresses of her generation.

In this sense Wells resembles Alfred Hitchcock, a director with an uncanny ability to identify actresses at the one moment of their lives when they are physically perfect for a particular role. Sylvia Sidney in "Sabotage", Nova Pilbeam in "Young and Innocent", and Joan Fontaine in "Rebecca" come to mind.

Wells, who also wrote ''The Truth About Cats and Dogs'', captures that moment in some young women's lives (yes, the film could be considered a feminist statement) when they are able to break free of expectations and programming. The Harper Sloane character seems so authentic and the portrayal so lacking in glib cynicism that it most likely has a lot of autobiographical elements.

Harper is tracking along toward Harvard Law School when she meets Cornelius Fitzpatrick (Stephen Rea), a middle-aged Irish artist who has been hired to photograph her sister's wedding. His well-practiced seduction technique and irreverent world-view causes a major attitude adjustment and she abandons her career track to become his protégé and lover.

The story is told from Harper's point of view and the viewer soon learns along with her that this is not the traditional "Pygmalion" scenario. While not exactly a rogue and a roué, "Connie" is a compulsive Henry Higgins who has repeatedly played this game with repressed young women. He goes into these relationships with a five-year time limit.

Consistent with the POV factor, Harper's story is told with intelligence and compassion, with a lot of emphasis on the fragility of a first love and the pain of a trust betrayed. The film's feminist slant is revealed not so much by what is explicitly shown but by its failure to bring any dimensionality to Connie's character. No clues are provided to explain his aversion to a long-term commitment, Harper discovers that his promises are empty ones but she never learns the roots of his insecurities.

Although Polley's best scenes are those with Carrie Preston, who plays her best friend and confidante; the most entertaining scenes are those with her mother (Jean Smart), an unstated version of Susan's mother on "Seinfeld". The dysfunctional nature of Harper's family and her mother's unfulfilled life are slowly and somewhat comically revealed, but the bottom line is that her mother is sincerely trying to shield her daughter from mistakes.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child. August 29, 2007

Heart-breakingly Real

I'd highly recommend this film to anyone, but especially to any
female artist, musician, actor who has come of age. This isn't
so much about a May-December romance: it is about the student/mentor bond which can be incredibly strong and intense,
and an aging artist who through Harper, is trying to hold onto
his past youth and the artistic potential he once had.

This could have been such a sappy movie, but the acting and writing kept that from happening. I agree with another reviewer - it was NOT predictable, and the acting was so real.

Sarah Polley is great, but Stephen Rea absolutely broke my heart.
These characters were not romanticized: they were multi-dimentional, human. There was good and not so good about them.
Connie Fitzgerald did manipulate and seduce Harper, but it was also clear that he really loved her. It was clear as well, that Harper knew what she was getting herself into and it was her choice ultimately.

My only reservation was that some of the family members (father,
sister) were one-dimensional to the point where it was hard to
believe. Perhaps that was how Harper saw them, or perhaps that
was done to set-off the volatile emotional intensity of the mother (Jean Smart, who was also good), and the repressed/about-to-emerge artistic intensity of Harper.

I am a die-hard Stephen Rea fan after seeing this film. July 13, 2005

A film for the artists

At first glance this film seems like a bad American TV movie, it is certainly shot like one. However 10 mins in you start to realise that this film has a little bit more going for it than that. The film follows the story of a girl in her early 20s and her journey into adulthood. On the way she falls for an older man, battles her parents and gets more than a glimce into the life of an artist. This film is perfect for anyone struggling with artistic asperations, think "American Beauty" meets "Lost in Translation." That's all you need to know, now go buy it! July 12, 2005

A gem ...

This isn't your typical "Hollywood/male fantasy fulfillment" version of a May-December romance, but neither is it one which sits in bitterly moralistic, harsh judgment of such relationships, or of the people who get themselves into them. Just when you think the film is about to veer off into either "mainstream, happy ending" territory OR "heavy-handed cautionary tale" territory ala the Lifestyle network (where every single movie shows women as victims and men as amoral, abusive monsters), it fools you by taking a different, more complicated, and utterly compelling path.

Except for one character (Sarah Polley's mother), the film stays away from one dimensional, oversimplified caricature. Speaking of the mother (played with surprising venom by Jean Smart), the character gets accolades from several reviewers of the movie for a scene in which she dissects the relationship between her daughter and the older man. Her so-called "insights" have been hailed as "brutally accurate, right on," etc.

I disagree. I think some people missed the point of that scene, in that the mother -- who is obviously seething with bitterness and resentment -- tosses off careworn cliches about certain men and certain relationships which, while they have some measure of truth, are far from being wise or wholly accurate. What the character says reveals just as much about her insecurities and issues as it does about those of her daughter and her daughter's lover.

It's really one of those subtle, thought-provoking treasures that almost demands discussion after you see it, especially if you're in a relationship with someone significantly younger or older than yourself. Trust me when I tell you, this surprisingly sweet and uncompromisingly tough movie does not end up where you think it will, though it doesn't try and "shock" you with a contrived, surprise ending, either. It's at once both beautiful and difficult to watch, romantic and pragmatic, confusing and contradictory, neither wholly perfect or wholly flawed, much like real life "May-December" romances and the people in them.
May 6, 2005

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