This comment was motivated largely by the desire to offset those here which casually dismissed or trashed "Guinevere" and, inexplicably, writer/director Audrey Wells personally with unnecessary and unprovoked venom.
"Guinevere" is a fine and engaging tale that plausibly sketches the arc of the relationship and romance between the daughter of a pair of society attorneys of Pacific Heights pedigree and a bohemian photographer who lives life on the edge financially and on the fringe socially. Sarah Polley as the confused but very-well brought-up, faintly rebellious 21-year-old Harper, and Stephen Rea as the 40-ish sometime wedding photographer, Connie, whose charm eventually wears thin, are both well cast and provide exemplary realizations of well-drawn characters.
The entire cast, in fact, is strong and deep, with fine turns from such actors as Sandra Oh, Jean Smart, Paul Dooley, Jasmine Guy and Gina Gershon. The production and cinematography are first-rate as well.
As the relationship deepens and its contours become clearer to both the audience and to Harper, the script deftly plumbs its pleasures and its perils. By subtly adopting Harper's point of view, the film takes us on the same emotional journey that she does, from the initial drunken delight of first love, to the later disappointments and, eventually, the despair.
In the end one feels that Harper, like the sensitive viewer, decides that it was all worth it.
If this engaging, well-crafted, unpretentious film has a weakness, I would point to the denouement, which is reminiscent of Fellini's "8 1/2" by reassembling all of Connie's former loves to bid him an upbeat farewell when he is diagnosed with a fatal illness. Though it presses to induce good will, it doesn't really earn it. This is a writer's escape, a fantasy that retreats from an inevitable reality a bit too bitter to swallow without added sugar.
Despite this lapse, "Guinevere" rewards an attentive viewer richly with this otherwise honest, unblinkered story of first love undone in part by the unbridgeable, ancient chasms of age and social strata.
"Guinevere" is a fine and engaging tale that plausibly sketches the arc of the relationship and romance between the daughter of a pair of society attorneys of Pacific Heights pedigree and a bohemian photographer who lives life on the edge financially and on the fringe socially. Sarah Polley as the confused but very-well brought-up, faintly rebellious 21-year-old Harper, and Stephen Rea as the 40-ish sometime wedding photographer, Connie, whose charm eventually wears thin, are both well cast and provide exemplary realizations of well-drawn characters.
The entire cast, in fact, is strong and deep, with fine turns from such actors as Sandra Oh, Jean Smart, Paul Dooley, Jasmine Guy and Gina Gershon. The production and cinematography are first-rate as well.
As the relationship deepens and its contours become clearer to both the audience and to Harper, the script deftly plumbs its pleasures and its perils. By subtly adopting Harper's point of view, the film takes us on the same emotional journey that she does, from the initial drunken delight of first love, to the later disappointments and, eventually, the despair.
In the end one feels that Harper, like the sensitive viewer, decides that it was all worth it.
If this engaging, well-crafted, unpretentious film has a weakness, I would point to the denouement, which is reminiscent of Fellini's "8 1/2" by reassembling all of Connie's former loves to bid him an upbeat farewell when he is diagnosed with a fatal illness. Though it presses to induce good will, it doesn't really earn it. This is a writer's escape, a fantasy that retreats from an inevitable reality a bit too bitter to swallow without added sugar.
Despite this lapse, "Guinevere" rewards an attentive viewer richly with this otherwise honest, unblinkered story of first love undone in part by the unbridgeable, ancient chasms of age and social strata.