Guinevere (1999; directed by Audrey Wells)
A good film but not a great one. Harper Sloane is the disgruntled younger daughter of two lawyers. Well, who wouldn't be disgruntled, but the movie stacks the deck by making her parents completely unbearable. All they talk about at dinner in their luxurious dining room is the law, and when Harper's mother does decide to loosen up at a Chinese restaurant, it's even more excrutiating than the endless discussions of legal questions.
Then Harper meets Connie Fitzpatrick, a raffish photographer who is hired to take pictures of her sister's wedding. Connie is an Artist, and you can tell because he spends all his time drinking, smoking, and sitting around bars and coffee houses arguing with his friends about politics and art. Like any sensible person, Harper prefers this to her family of lawyers, so she moves into the loft where Connie lives and works, unwittingly becoming his latest Guinevere. As she later discovers, Connie has made a practice of seducing young women, all of whom he called Guinevere as he trains and encourages them to become artists like him (you know: drinking, smoking and arguing).
The interesting thing about all this, by the way, is that while Harper never actually manages to take a single photograph while she is with Connie, she does go on to become a successful artist, as do the other Guineveres as well. Since there is no suggestion that Connie is actually extraordinary in any way, it seems the idea is that almost anybody can make art if only they get a little encouragement.
One thing I did think was lacking was any suggestion that Connie could or should be learning anything from Harper. The movie seems to accept Connie's view that the education and training are completely a one-way process, and this makes the whole story somewhat one-dimensional.
What makes the film worth seeing is the performances. Sarah Polley is, as usual, wonderful, and Stephen Rae is very appealing as Connie (is it just me, or does he look like Tom Stoppard's younger brother?). And Jean Smart (playing Harper's mother) has one incredible scene where she confronts Connie and tells him what she thinks of him. It's the toughest scene in the picture, and very welcome.
By the way, some reviewers wondered why Connie calls all his proteges Guinevere, but it seems pretty obvious to me. The essence of the story of Arthur and Guinevere and Lancelot is the inevitability that, sooner or later, Guinevere will betray Arthur for the younger man.
With Sarah Polley: Go, eXistenZ, The Sweet Hereafter
With Stephen Rea: The Crying Game