Product Details

• Actors: Sarah Polley, Stephen Rea, Jean Smart, Gina Gershon, Paul Dooley
• Directors: Audrey Wells
• Writers: Audrey Wells
• Producers: Avi Lerner, Beau Flynn, Boaz Davidson, Bob Weinstein, Brad Weston
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Walt Disney Video
• VHS Release Date: March 13, 2001
• Run Time: 104 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6305732361
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #325,428 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

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

From The New Yorker

Romantic and shrewdly realistic at the same time. A smart San Francisco girl, Harper (Sarah Polley), escapes an unhappy family of lawyers and a career at Harvard Law School and takes up instead with Connie (Stephen Rea), a bohemian Mission District photographer who tells her that she's an artist. The photographer is a con man and a practiced seducer of young women, but he delivers the goods-not just sex but the attention that a young woman needs. Stephen Rea doesn't mask Connie's decrepitude, but he colors it with a lilting voice and a sad-eyed charm, and the young Canadian actress Sarah Polley is a proud, delicate performer-a potential star. Written and directed with warmth and perception by Audrey Wells. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Oscar overlooked this one, March 20, 2000

By 

Jimmy James (?) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Guinevere (DVD)

I cant believe how incredibly good and convincing sarah polley was in this.After seeing GO! I thought she couldnt act,boy was I wrong.her performance was A list as was the rest of the cast The story and look was realistic.What can you say other than DYNOMITE!

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars No secrets here., January 9, 2002

By 

Girl Friday APL (In the heart of the USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Guinevere [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I haven't seen Rea since his role in "don't reveal the secret!" _Crying Game_, although I've heard that he did well in _Still Crazy_. _Guenevere_, though, explores an odd mentor-lover relationship between starving artist Rea and blue-blood, WASPy Polley. The age difference here wasn't the only issue, oddly enough--rather it was the strange turns that inevitably develop between people who knowingly enter a relationship where tutoring is an intended part of the romance. Rea's artist has a long history of shacking up with young women and turning them into "true" artists, be they painters, sculptors, dancers, or in Polley's case, photographers. And although I normally would balk at the willingness with which these women handed themselves over to Rea's well-worn lines and drunken philosophies, _Guenevere_ managed to avoid the squeamishness that I feel, for example, whenever I see Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones together. Be sure to pay attention to Jean Smart's dead-on analysis of daughter Polley and Rea's relationship; it's eloquent and brutal.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Heart-breakingly Real, July 12, 2005

By 

Middle Child - See all my reviews

This review is from: Guinevere (DVD)

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.