Guinevere


Starring Sarah Polley, Stephen Rea, Jean Smart, Gina Gershon,Sandra Oh, Jasmine Guy, Carrie Preston, Paul Dooley. Written and Directed by Audrey Wells.

Harper (Polley) is the younger child in an over-achieving, Harvard grad lawyer family. Her lawyer sister is being married, and her lawyer mom (Smart) is obsessing about impressing the huge phalanx of guests, and taking her anxieties out on Harper. Harper is, of course, expected to go to Harvard and follow in all their footsteps. But she meets the scruffy, bohemian photographer Connie (Rea), and he takes an interest in her and actually treats her nicely, calling her Queen Guinevere. She moves out of the house, and into Connie's place, telling her mom she's in the dorm with a friend (Preston). Connie tells her he wants to make her an artist, and bring out the potential within her. Things go well, until she talks to her new friend Billie (Gershon), and finds Connie used the same lines and name Guinevere on Billie, and on several others (Oh, Guy). She storms out of Connie's apartment, and goes home.

At home, she remembers why she hated being there - the competition between family members, and the cold, uncommunicative atmosphere. She leaves home again, and returns to Connie, where she reads a lot, talks with his friends in the coffee shop, and begins to be happy. But will it last?

Another in a long line of stories about a young women falling for an older man, Guinevere is the first to show from the young woman's point of view what the attraction might be. Ignored or belittled at home, Connie is the first older person to take her views and potential seriously. Although, it's a little fuzzy why a person already accepted to Harvard, who would obviously have exceptional academic abilities, would think she has no skills or potential. She may not have wanted to become a lawyer, but she surely could have gone to another school in another field if she really wanted to. Harper seems not to be interested in how attractive Connie is, but in how she feels being with him because of the interest he shows in her.

A strength in the movie is that the main characters are not drawn as just good or bad. Connie uses the same lines on all of his younger conquests, but he does care about their artistic progress, and isn't just in it for the sex or the chance for money. And he's not beneath manipulating Harper's feelings to get what he wants. When Harper finds out about Connie's using the same lines on her as he did with other women, she leaves in anger, but after spending some more time at her parent's place, she decides, on balance, it's worth it to be with him. Her almost obsession for Connie stems from her need not for him, but for how he makes her feel about herself. As she says as the beginning of the film, Connie was either the biggest mistake she ever made, or the best thing that ever happened to her. And the independent, self-assured woman that emerges at the end of the film suggests she did benefit from the exchange.

Fresh off an exceptional performance in The Sweet Hereafter and good work in Go, Sarah Polley is outstanding. She believably goes from shy and clumsy to a confident young woman, feeling attractive and capable. In her scenes with her best friend, she sells us on how she loves the attention she is getting. Jean Smart is equally as good as the domineering, mean-spirited mother who resents her husband's attention on her older daughter, and considers Harper her weak and unimportant daughter, only there to do what Mommy wants her to do. Rea gives Connie a ruffled, laconic quality that doesn't always work, reducing the energy in the film provided by Polley. The screenplay won a screenplay award at the Sundance Film Festival, and to its credit, the plot is fresh and often unpredictable. But the story often moves along unnecessarily slow, and the ending of Harper's relationship with Connie seems to be a case of not knowing how to end it, so it just fizzles out. And the film's ending several years later seems a bit contrived to bring things to an end. But Polley's performance, and the unique take on old guy / young girl romance makes Guinevere worth seeing.




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