The woman's name is not Guinevere but Harper. He calls all of his women Guinevere. His name is Connie Fitzpatrick, and he's a talented but alcoholic photographer who lives in a loft in San Francisco and specializes in mentoring young women. He also sleeps with them, but we sense that the sex is secondary to the need for proteges. Harper arrives at his loft as the previous Guinevere is tearfully leaving, and later in the film Connie is presented with a group portrait of five of his former lovers: "Your life work," they tell him.
Harper (Sarah Polley) meets Connie at a particular time in her life. Her family is rich and cold. She is on track for Harvard but feels no calling to go there. There is no boy in her life. Anger, irony and cynicism circle the family dining table. She wants to break with this and find a partner who allows her to express her idealism. Writing those words, I realized that "Guinevere" tells the same story as "American Beauty," with the ages and sexes reversed: The middle-aged Kevin Spacey character lusts for a high school cheerleader for the same reason that Harper knocks on the photographer's door; what they both seek is affirmation that they are good, unique, and treasured. If you can find that in a lover, you can put up with a lot.
Connie (Stephen Rea) is, we are told, a great photographer. We are told by him. We see a few of his pictures, which are good enough, and we hear some of his beliefs, such as, "Take a picture when it hurts so bad you can't stand it." Well, that's easy enough to say. He supports himself as a wedding photographer, which would seem to contradict his rule, but since it hurts really bad when he doesn't have enough money to buy booze, maybe the rule applies.
Connie's need is to find unformed young women and teach them. "You have to create something," he tells Harper when she moves in. He makes her read. And she is included in his boozy philosophical round-table at the neighborhood tavern. His tragedy is that when his Guineveres learn enough, they know enough to leave. There is a horrible, perfect, brilliant moment in this film when Harper's society-bitch mother (Jean Smart) finds out about their relationship and comes to call. She stalks the shabby loft in her expensive clothes, she smokes a cigarette with such style that he puts his own out, and in icy disdain she says, "What do you have against women your own age?" And answers her own question: "I know exactly what she has that I haven't got. Awe." She's right, but can you blame him? To be regarded with awe can be a wondrous aphrodisiac. And he does care, really care, for her--for all the Guineveres. In her first night at his place, he lets her have the sleeping loft and he sleeps on the floor of his darkroom. "There's lots of reading matter here," he says. The book on top of the stack is the photography of Alfred Steiglitz. It falls open to a page. "That's Georgia O'Keeffe," she says. He tells her: "When they met, he was a famous photographer, and she was about your age." If the movie had been 15 seconds longer, there could have been a scene showing him placing that educational volume on top of the reading matter.
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