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| Guinevere | 
 enlarge | Director: Audrey Wells
Actors: Sarah Polley, Stephen Rea, Jean Smart, Gina Gershon, Paul Dooley
Studio: Miramax
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.99
Buy New: $7.37
You Save: $7.62 (51%)
New (30) Used (9) from $6.79
Avg. Customer Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 27117
Format: Ac-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 105
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
DVD Layers: 1
DVD Sides: 1
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: 717951005885
ISBN: 630574453X
UPC: 717951005885
EAN: 9786305744535
ASIN: 630574453X
Theatrical Release Date: 1999
Release Date: March 14, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW, Factory Sealed items direct from the Studios. 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee. Quick International Airmail!
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
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
Product Description
The story of a shy young woman's discovery of life and love in the arms of an older man.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 4-JAN-2005
Media Type: DVD
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| Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...
 A Must See If Crushing On Sarah Polley August 30, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
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 protege 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 roue, "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.
 Heart-breakingly Real July 13, 2005
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
I'd highly recommend this film to anyone, but especially to any
female artist, musician, actor who has come of age. This isn't
so much about a May-December romance: it is about the student/mentor bond which can be incredibly strong and intense,
and an aging artist who through Harper, is trying to hold onto
his past youth and the artistic potential he once had.
This could have been such a sappy movie, but the acting and writing kept that from happening. I agree with another reviewer - it was NOT predictable, and the acting was so real.
Sarah Polley is great, but Stephen Rea absolutely broke my heart.
These characters were not romanticized: they were multi-dimentional, human. There was good and not so good about them.
Connie Fitzgerald did manipulate and seduce Harper, but it was also clear that he really loved her. It was clear as well, that Harper knew what she was getting herself into and it was her choice ultimately.
My only reservation was that some of the family members (father,
sister) were one-dimensional to the point where it was hard to
believe. Perhaps that was how Harper saw them, or perhaps that
was done to set-off the volatile emotional intensity of the mother (Jean Smart, who was also good), and the repressed/about-to-emerge artistic intensity of Harper.
I am a die-hard Stephen Rea fan after seeing this film.
A film for the artists July 12, 2005
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
At first glance this film seems like a bad American TV movie, it is certainly shot like one. However 10 mins in you start to realise that this film has a little bit more going for it than that. The film follows the story of a girl in her early 20s and her journey into adulthood. On the way she falls for an older man, battles her parents and gets more than a glimce into the life of an artist. This film is perfect for anyone struggling with artistic asperations, think "American Beauty" meets "Lost in Translation." That's all you need to know, now go buy it!
A gem ... May 6, 2005
8 out of 11 found this review helpful
This isn't your typical "Hollywood/male fantasy fulfillment" version of a May-December romance, but neither is it one which sits in bitterly moralistic, harsh judgment of such relationships, or of the people who get themselves into them. Just when you think the film is about to veer off into either "mainstream, happy ending" territory OR "heavy-handed cautionary tale" territory ala the Lifestyle network (where every single movie shows women as victims and men as amoral, abusive monsters), it fools you by taking a different, more complicated, and utterly compelling path.
Except for one character (Sarah Polley's mother), the film stays away from one dimensional, oversimplified caricature. Speaking of the mother (played with surprising venom by Jean Smart), the character gets accolades from several reviewers of the movie for a scene in which she dissects the relationship between her daughter and the older man. Her so-called "insights" have been hailed as "brutally accurate, right on," etc.
I disagree. I think some people missed the point of that scene, in that the mother -- who is obviously seething with bitterness and resentment -- tosses off careworn cliches about certain men and certain relationships which, while they have some measure of truth, are far from being wise or wholly accurate. What the character says reveals just as much about her insecurities and issues as it does about those of her daughter and her daughter's lover.
It's really one of those subtle, thought-provoking treasures that almost demands discussion after you see it, especially if you're in a relationship with someone significantly younger or older than yourself. Trust me when I tell you, this surprisingly sweet and uncompromisingly tough movie does not end up where you think it will, though it doesn't try and "shock" you with a contrived, surprise ending, either. It's at once both beautiful and difficult to watch, romantic and pragmatic, confusing and contradictory, neither wholly perfect or wholly flawed, much like real life "May-December" romances and the people in them.
 Given the cast I am shocked there is no awe in this one May 5, 2005
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
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 proteges. 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 protege, 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.
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