Guinevere dvd movie.|
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List Price: $14.99 Our Price: $12.99 You Save: $2 Features • AC-3 • Anamorphic • Closed-captioned • Color • Dolby • DVD-Video • Widescreen • NTSC In Theaters : 1999 DVD Release : 14 March, 2000 |
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Guinevere description Sarah Polley has built a reputation on her eerie calm--most of her performances seem dominated by an icy, implacable stare. That's why her performance in Guinevere is such a revelation. Polley plays Harper, a young woman from a wealthy but troubled family who's on the verge of a nervous breakdown. At her older sister's wedding, she meets Connie (Stephen Rea), a photographer as old as her parents, with whom she begins an affair. Their relationship--partly an education in the arts, partly an escape from the repression of her family--takes a variety of twists and turns, none of them predictable, all of them questionable, all of them genuine. The movie is clear-eyed about the situation: Connie isn't idealized, and is in many ways a creepy older man, neurotic and self-aggrandizing, but he also offers a kind of emotional support that Harper has never had. Whenever the movie seems to be turning into some bohemian fantasy, something happens that returns it to earth, sometimes with an uncomfortable jolt. It's unsettling, insightful, charming, scary, absurd, and all too real. All the performances are excellent--Jean Smart, as Harper's mother, is smart and cuttingly bitter; Rea is by turns sweet and manipulative, honest and self-deluded. But above all, Polley displays a combination of vulnerability and steely determination that makes Guinevere utterly compelling. The ending is curious--I still haven't made up my mind about it. But for a movie as committed to the contradictions of human relationships as this one, there's nothing wrong with that. --Bret Fetzer |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | 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 protA gA 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 rouA , "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. |
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