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By Andrea Thompson
The story “Guinevere” tells has been done to death, hasn't it? I mean, don't we all know how it goes? An innocent young ingenue forms a relationship with a much older man, and she becomes his muse while also being mentored by him, which allows her to blossom creatively as well.
Yet to watch “Guinevere” is to see far more. It's partly due to writer and director Audrey Wells, who was still in the beginning of her career when she made her directorial debut with this film in 1999. But the main one is probably lead Sarah Polley, who is remarkable as 21-year-old Harper Sloane, who meets the much older bohemian photographer Connie (Stephen Rea) at her sister's wedding.
Actually, Connie notices Harper far before he approaches her, snapping a photo of the awkward young woman as she's doing her best to appear anything but. She's a daughter of privilege who is bound for Harvard, per the expectations of her family, who are part of a long tradition of legal sharks. Privilege may be wasted on the privileged, but once Harper follows Connie into his world, which is populated by a vast array of artists, the conservative atmosphere of her family life becomes more stifling than ever.
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Connie also constantly asks Harper for her opinion, firmly believes she has the potential to be a great artist, and insists on sleeping on the floor of his darkroom when she spends the night in his loft. So when Harper tries to insist Connie is too old for her, her friend Patty (Carrie Preston) knows better, and so do we. The affair they quickly start is a given, as are the difficulties inherent in it. Harper attempts to retreat back to her family, but since Connie is the only entry point for a more free-spirited environment she doesn't have the confidence or connections to explore on her own, she quickly returns to him when he shows up asking for her forgiveness. That he also manages to throw her a killer 21st birthday party is the kicker.
By then, both we and Harper are aware she is one in a long line of young women Connie has dated, all of whom he refers to as Guinevere. But he also genuinely tries to help them, insisting that they work, which to him means studying, learning, and creating, whether it happens to be through photography, writing, painting, or some other artistic endeavor. Connie desperately wants to be honest, but his deceptions are unavoidable due to the fact that he's just as desperate to believe he's not the same as, say, another older man who gives him a smirking thumbs up while he's sitting with a much younger blonde. It's even worse than other reactions the two of them tend to inspire, which can be summed up as variations of an eye-roll.
But it's Harper's mother Deborah (Jean Smart) who best sums up the dynamic between Connie and Harper while revealing herself to to be a society bitch in the best way. And goddamn, Jean Smart makes the most out of this small role. She had been unaware that her daughter was living with Connie, and once she finds out, she has no problem letting her feelings be known to them both. Not only does she ask Connie outright what he has against women his own age, she refuses to let him bullshit his way out of the answer. She also knows that his preference for the barely legal is due to far more than just their bodies, even if that's the easy answer.
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“I know exactly what she has that I haven't got,” Deborah says to Connie as she smokes her cigarette so stylishly it should be impossible. “Awe. That's it, isn't it? I mean, no real woman – no woman of experience, would ever stand in front of you with awe in her eyes...and say, 'Wow, look at that man. Look at that bohemian wedding photographer with holes in his jeans. Gosh, isn't he something?' No. It takes a naive girl for that. It takes Harper for that.” So effective is Smart's delivery that her character had the honor of being called not just a nasty woman, but a “terribly nasty” one by an LA Times critic, even as he acknowledged how right she was.
Harper's feelings are more complicated four years after she and Connie part ways, by which time she has become a successful photographer and he is dying from complications related to alcoholism. “He was the worst man I ever met,” she recalls. “Or maybe the best. I'm still not sure. If you're supposed to learn from your mistakes, then he was the best mistake I ever made. He was my most spectacular, and cherished fuckup.” Their relationship hurts her as much as it helps her, and her reaction is an example of one of the many ways women must forgive for the sake of their sanity. So often, this is how young women are initiated into fields which are dominated by men, who are often just as intent on satisfying their own desires as they are in assisting the vulnerable young women who happen to stumble across their path.
However, “Guinevere” acknowledges another truth, on how ultimately unsatisfying it often is for the other side of the equation – the men who do the exploiting. Connie may repeatedly get a pass to behave this way over and over again, but it leaves him unhappy and ultimately less successful. As he nears his end, he certainly gets more support than he deserves, from not just Harper, but the other women from his past who return, which include the likes of Gina Gershon and Sandra Oh, and of course, his latest bright young thing, April (Grace Una).
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Even as Harper informs the dying Connie just how much it took for her to get to a point where she could return to his side, something which wouldn't have been possible for her two or even one years ago, she is willing to give Connie a vision of his own personal heaven. In her imagination, as Connie goes down an astonishingly bright hallway, he is treated to the presence of the various women from his past, who all making individual appearances as he glides onward. At the end, a 19-year-old with a camera awaits. As she takes his picture, the flash goes off with the brightest, purest light he's ever seen. And that will be all, because in the end, what more could a man like Connie want?
