Search - Guinevere on DVD

Given the cast I am shocked there is no awe in this one

Lawrance M. Bernabo | The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota | 05/05/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The best scene in "Guinevere" belongs to Jean Smart and it is also the scene that exposes the fatal flaw in this 1999 drama from writer-director Audrey Wells ("Under the Tuscan Sun"). Smart plays Deborah Sloane, who has discovered that her 20-year-old daughter Harper (Sarah Polley) is shacked up with Connie Fitzpatrick (Stephen Rea), a photograph and drunk (not always in that order) who is older than Deborah. Harper is the latest in a series of young girls that Connie has taken under his wing as his "Guinevere," but Deborah does not know about all that. What she knows is that someone older than she is happens to be having sex with her daughter, and Deborah has a theory as to why this is happening and why Connie does not like women his own age. When she asks what Harper has that she does not, her answer is "awe." Harper can look at Connie with awe, whereas Deborah, who has been around, cannot. The problem is that neither can we.



You have to understand that Deborah is a rather unsympathetic figure in this film, destroying a dinner with her family by her insistence that they read the fortunes in their fortune cookies and add "in bed" to the end. But she is devastating right about Connie and that is why this film does not work for me. I have no problem with the idea that a story about an artist who goes through a series of young women who act as his muses and protégés. We meet most of the rest of these Guineveres during the course of the film and some of them are played by Gina Gershon, Sandra Oh and Jasmine Guy. But what we do not get to see is any evidence that Connie is any sort of artistic genius. There are some decent black & white photographs but basically you have to take the film's position that he is worth of emulation let alone awe. The most demonstrative talent Connie shows in the film is to (euphemism warning) make her extremely happy while she is still dressed (okay, not so much a euphemism as being extremely vague).



There is even less of an idea in the film that Harper would be a worthy protégé, or muse for that matter. This is rather odd because as an actress Sarah Polley usually makes her characters seem pretty smart (not Julia Stiles smart but certainly in the Jodie Foster range), and here she only comes across as clueless without a sense of direction. Connie must look better to Harper than her family or going to Harvard, but that is not really saying much, and when we see her at the end of the film and she is clearly a confident young woman, there is no real reason to give Connie the credit. So I cannot help but think that if Connie wants to do the Svengali routine, he could do better than Harper. If I am thinking that, then clearly "Guinevere" is not working despite the solid cast. The fault is not in the performances, but in the script.



Admittedly the problem can be that I am of the wrong gender to appreciate a film that is essentially a female coming of age story. Certainly that is an almost microscopic movie genre in comparison to male coming of age stories (which might actually cover most movies being made today now that I stop and think about it). I also have a problem with the idea that given a choice between Jean Smart and Sarah Polley (abstracted to the general level of a woman in her forties versus a woman in her twenties) the choice is obvious, and that would be because I know what the former has that the latter does not. But the main complaint remains that while I might be able to buy Harper and Connie are lovers I cannot accept them as student and teacher, and ultimately that is what is supposed to make "Guinevere" more than just another older man/younger woman movie, even if it is told from her perspective."