Review: Guinevere

What does she see in him? He is photographer Connie Fitzpatrick (Stephen Rea), and it's not difficult to see why this fiftysomething Irishman is taken with her. She is Harper Sloane (Sarah Polley), a brainy beauty who's barely 21 and who has yet to develop a rooted self-confidence. She is his latest Guinevere.

They meet during her sister's wedding. He is the photographer hired for the occasion and she is playing the part of the dutiful daughter and younger sister. They find refuge outside and share a drink. He immediately settles his gaze on her. "I don't like being looked at," she says. "It's a little too late for that," he replies. They smile and soon thereafter they become live-in lovers.

Connie introduces her to his friends including Billie (Gina Gershon), a former Guinevere. Like all Guineveres before her, Harper must work, learn, commit herself to study, create something. "I've got no talent for anything. You're mistaking me for someone with potential," she responds but soon finds herself as his assistant, learning about lighting and equipment. Gradually, she becomes more comfortable in her own skin, more aware of her worth, more confident of her place in the world.

Yet there are obstacles to be overcome. Such as the stares and whispers of passersby when she and Connie hit the town. Or Connie's stable of former Guineveres. "Only the most promising are chosen. Or the most pathetically fucked-up," confides Billie, who's been around Connie's block and back. And then there is her mother's wrath. Mrs. Deborah Sloane is played to the hilt by Jean Smart, better known as one of television's Designing Women. Yet, let's not forget she also played serial killer Aileen Wuornos in a TV movie. Her Deborah is calibrated with an ice-pick bitchiness, evidenced by the scene where she confronts and verbally castrates her daughter and Connie with one swift blow: "I know what she has that I haven't got. Awe. No real woman would ever stand in front of you with awe in her eyes. It takes a naive girl for that. It takes Harper for that."

Guinevere is written and directed by Audrey Wells, the scribe responsible for The Truth About Cats and Dogs and George of the Jungle. It's an interesting thing she does -- most movies choose to gloss over a couple's age difference (Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment, Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow in A Perfect Murder) or treat it in a Lolitaesque manner. Wells chooses not go either route and her exploration on the subject benefits greatly.

More intriguing is the Guinevere angle itself. Connie may be lover to these insecure young women but he knows he can't hold on to them forever, precisely because of the age gap -- Queen Guinevere leaves King Arthur for the younger Lancelot. Knowing he has such a limited time and his Guineveres are still moldable, Connie nurtures their artistry and creativity. Of course, once these women have brought themselves into focus, Connie is left behind. "He was the worst man I've ever met, or maybe the best," Harper muses five years later. "If you're supposed to learn from your mistakes, then he's the best mistake I ever made."

I'd never thought much of Polley, an actress who has had wreaths of hosannas thrown in her direction for her performances in The Sweet Hereafter and Go. It only takes one film to convert the faithless and Guinevere is the film. I also caught a Canadian film, Joe's So Mean to Josephine, on television a few days later. It is a film she made a few years earlier and where she plays quite possibly one of the most irritating blonds I'd ever witnessed onscreen. Yet it is a testament to her willingness to allow her characters their foibles.

A matchstick of a girl with large blue eyes and tiny, predatory teeth, Polley, like Harper, is still in the process of coming into her own powers. What is already there, however, is a blessedly reactive face, a quiet but powerful presence and a wholehearted promise that the best is yet to come.

Guinevere

Directed by: Audrey Wells

Written by: Audrey Wells

Starring: Sarah Polley, Stephen Rea, Jean Smart, Gina Gershon, Sandra Oh, Carrie Preston