I'm putting this in here not so much for the purposes of explaining or reviewing, but for 1) giving other haters of Guinevere a place to check in, and 2) entertaining those who love to read negative reviews of movies they know they're going to see anyway.
Poor, pathetic Harper, literally hiding in the closet at her sister's wedding, her hair mussed and her bride's-maid dress sagging off her shoulders. "You've obviously mistaken me for someone with potential," she barely manages to squeak to the wedding photographer, in one of the multitudinous lines of on-the-nose dialogue in this self-conscious, overwrought clunker.
Somehow this bright, beautiful 20-year-old has managed to get through her entire life, including four years of college, without once meeting a person who has affirmed her intelligence and her creativity, even though she's smart enough to have been accepted into Harvard Law. Similar ironies occur in real life--the beauty who thinks she's ugly, the overachiever who thinks she's not doing enough--but at some point you lose interest in a character who's either got some serious personality disorder or whose creator (the writer) imagines that weird gestures and speeches can take the place of psychology.
The beautiful, bright girl proves utterly vulnerable to the seducements of the wedding photographer: an older, less-promising, often insolent, and lecherous man who says things to her like "You can do it" and "You must learn to detest the bourgeoisie." Oh, I don't remember if he actually said *those* things, but his utterances are so much hogwash that only an impression of nonsense remains. Harper is introduced to . . . coffee houses! She listens to . . . jazz! Someone actually asks her about her ideas for the first ever time in her whole entire life! To go back to the biographical thing, how did this girl ever get the liberal arts education required to enter Harvard Law without someone at least once eliciting her opinion on something? And probably admiring it? Without ever having a lively conversation with intellectual and creative types? Without ever laughing? Without going through that whole fascinating-older-man thing about ten times? Without getting a glimpse outside the world she came from?
Unlikely, weird scenes get slapped on, one after the other, without any progress in character or conflict. She throws herself on him hungrily. She moves in. He insults her, she runs away, she insults him and then comes back, they insult each other and reunite. When he's at his lowest, she goes into a frenzy of taking his picture, presumably off a roll of film with about 200 exposures on it. Then she gets him into focus and relents with a whimper.
Ultimately, the photog turns out to be every bit as bad as he promises, and perhaps a little better since he's principled enough to send her away when it's at the point where the relationship can do nothing but drag her down. Fast-forward to so many years later and she's giving him the last and only thing she can: her best wishes for a good death. The scene drags on and on, and ends with his dissolution into heavenly white light. Why? Whose story was this? "He was the worst man I ever met. Or the best man I ever met." This ham-fisted summary, I suppose, is supposed to be a specimen of brilliant, tortured, complex ambiguity. To me, it's a failure to make a stand, an excuse for the writer to dump a truckload of contradictions into a character then sneak away without explaining any of it. And why end with him? Again I ask, whose story was this?
Audrey Wells, you're a fraud.
Poor, pathetic Harper, literally hiding in the closet at her sister's wedding, her hair mussed and her bride's-maid dress sagging off her shoulders. "You've obviously mistaken me for someone with potential," she barely manages to squeak to the wedding photographer, in one of the multitudinous lines of on-the-nose dialogue in this self-conscious, overwrought clunker.
Somehow this bright, beautiful 20-year-old has managed to get through her entire life, including four years of college, without once meeting a person who has affirmed her intelligence and her creativity, even though she's smart enough to have been accepted into Harvard Law. Similar ironies occur in real life--the beauty who thinks she's ugly, the overachiever who thinks she's not doing enough--but at some point you lose interest in a character who's either got some serious personality disorder or whose creator (the writer) imagines that weird gestures and speeches can take the place of psychology.
The beautiful, bright girl proves utterly vulnerable to the seducements of the wedding photographer: an older, less-promising, often insolent, and lecherous man who says things to her like "You can do it" and "You must learn to detest the bourgeoisie." Oh, I don't remember if he actually said *those* things, but his utterances are so much hogwash that only an impression of nonsense remains. Harper is introduced to . . . coffee houses! She listens to . . . jazz! Someone actually asks her about her ideas for the first ever time in her whole entire life! To go back to the biographical thing, how did this girl ever get the liberal arts education required to enter Harvard Law without someone at least once eliciting her opinion on something? And probably admiring it? Without ever having a lively conversation with intellectual and creative types? Without ever laughing? Without going through that whole fascinating-older-man thing about ten times? Without getting a glimpse outside the world she came from?
Unlikely, weird scenes get slapped on, one after the other, without any progress in character or conflict. She throws herself on him hungrily. She moves in. He insults her, she runs away, she insults him and then comes back, they insult each other and reunite. When he's at his lowest, she goes into a frenzy of taking his picture, presumably off a roll of film with about 200 exposures on it. Then she gets him into focus and relents with a whimper.
Ultimately, the photog turns out to be every bit as bad as he promises, and perhaps a little better since he's principled enough to send her away when it's at the point where the relationship can do nothing but drag her down. Fast-forward to so many years later and she's giving him the last and only thing she can: her best wishes for a good death. The scene drags on and on, and ends with his dissolution into heavenly white light. Why? Whose story was this? "He was the worst man I ever met. Or the best man I ever met." This ham-fisted summary, I suppose, is supposed to be a specimen of brilliant, tortured, complex ambiguity. To me, it's a failure to make a stand, an excuse for the writer to dump a truckload of contradictions into a character then sneak away without explaining any of it. And why end with him? Again I ask, whose story was this?
Audrey Wells, you're a fraud.