Rating: 

The Info

Directed by: Audrey Wells
Written by: Audrey Wells
Starring: Stephen Rea, Sarah Polley, Jean Smart, Gina Gershon
Produced by: Jonathan King, Brad Weston

The Nutshell

A shy young woman finds love and spiritual growth in a forty-something photographer.

The Review

     There are certain rules to follow when making a romantic film. Looking back at the majority of romantic efforts over the past decade makes these rules clear. The first rule: the lead characters should be normal people, preferably with minor emotional problems related to love. At least one should be divorced, or at least have been in a rocky relationship in the near past. If you are going for major tears, one lead should have lost a spouse to a medical problem. The second rule, complementing the first: neither lead should be a bad person, unless your romantic film is more of a comedy. Thus terrorists and criminals are out, unless the criminal aspect of the relationship is for laughs (also, this rule doesn't apply if the romance is secondary to something else in the film) . Finally, the third rule states: if your leads are of very different ages, don't mention it! Want to couple Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones? Go ahead, but don't write too much dialogue about it, otherwise the audience will realize how ridiculous the relationship is. These are some of the unspoken rules that seem to guide your typical Hollywood romance. Commercially, these rules work. Critically, these rules make for tired, cliched movies that can bore you to tears. Guinevere ignores these rules and brings to the screen a relationship that is risky, but plausible and original.

    Guinevere is the story of how Harper Sloane (Polley) is transformed from a shy young woman following the career path that her parents have chosen for her, into a confident, successful woman who follows her own path. This transformation is thanks to Connie Fitzpatrick (Rea), the aging photog who sees in Harper the potential for greatness. They meet at a wedding that Connie is hired to shoot, and in which Harper is a bridesmaid. When Harper goes to Connie's office to pick up the photos, she is given a glimpse of his artist's world, and sees a life vastly different from the stuffy, lawyer's realm that is her family. Telling her family that she is moving in with her friend, she becomes Connie's student, living with him while trying to meet the potential that he sees in her. This leads to a relationship, and to Harper abandoning everything (including an acceptance at Harvard) to immerse herself in Connie's world.

    Their relationship is not unique ("the young person changing the way they see life thanks to an older person" story will likely never be done as well as it was in Hal Ashby's Harold & Maude) but it is intriguing and intelligently written. Thanks to the dual nature of their life together (teacher/student and lover/lover), there are questions of motive involved. Is Connie simply such a passionate teacher that he invariably becomes involved with his student, or is he a dirty old man who uses his ability to teach as an excuse to bed women half his age? The answer is likely a bit of both, though each viewer may see it differently. Whatever his motives, Connie is the "heavy" in the relationship, not only teaching Harper to take photos, but also to also discover her inner self. Thanks to her oppressive family, Harper seems to have never grown from a teenager to a 20-something, and it takes this older man who has lived life to help her find her own.

    Audrey Wells, who wrote and directed Guinevere, does well when shooting the main scenes, in which the relationship between Harper and Connie is explored. However, she pads the story with a lot of unneeded, cliched material. Except for Harper, every character is cliched. Harper's parents and siblings are all lawyers, and it is obvious. Everyone dresses up nicely for dinner, and discusses... law. Why couldn't one of them be funny, or have poor table manners? The point is to show the oppressive nature of Harper's life, but it is a point well-made after the film's first scene. Connie is greatly flawed, like most other artists in cinematic history; he has a drinking problem, and seems to have an unspoken medical problem. There are a couple of overly cute scenes in the film that would more properly belong in a film like You've Got Mail or Runaway Bride. One scene in which Connie builds a monument to Harper on his building's roof, and the film's surreal denouement both seem out of place..

    The film's greatest flaw is that it assumes the viewer does not understand the relationship. Wells has written an intelligent, layered love story here, and needn't have worried. Anyone who pays attention can figure out that Harper isn't so much in love with Connie as she is in awe of him. His world, his thoughts and his ability to take beautiful pictures are what enraptures Harper. She loves him because he represents everything that her family isn't, and because he himself is everything she wants to be. But, assuming that we haven't realized this, Wells throws in a scene where Harper's mother Deborah (Jean Smart in a delicious role) corners Connie and tries to make him feel guilty for the reasons behind the relationship. While she may be looking at Connie, Deborah is really talking to us, to make sure we get the point. Well-acted and hilarious, the scene is unfortunately equivalent to one of those annoying voice-overs where the narrator tells you everything you need to know.

    In the end, the polarity of the relationship blurs. Through the course of their life together, events happen which end Harper's awe of Connie, yet she still loves him. Harper says in a voice-over that Connie is both the best and the worst thing that ever happened to her, and she is right. Their relationship begins for the wrong reasons, and Connie dominates and controls Harper's life, much like her parents had, yet there is a difference. Harper's parents had only the family tradition in mind, whereas Connie pulls Harper away from tradition and into a new world of her own choosing. While Guinevere has its flaws, its central premise is noble and intelligently written. Combined with the incredible acting ability of Sarah Polley, it makes for an entertaining, touching love story that is superior to most Hollywood romances.

Copyright - Tim Chandler

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