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The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess works
well up to the halfway mark but after that it runs out of steam,
writes Ervell E. Menezes
Gillian Guess is 36, a mother, daughter, nympho, everything you dreaded about and knew where to ask. Well, she’s the central character (obviously) in The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess (Canada) and she’s being interviewed on the Bobby Tomahawk talk show. That Gillian Guess is out to shock the audience is obvious. But director Bruce McDonald juggles back and forth in time to tell her story—shades of Pulp Fiction and Run, Lola Run. She is also the mother of two girls and lays down the rules for them but how can she make them not do what she did. That’s her dilemma. And when as a member of the jury she has a liaison with convict Peter Gill (Ben Babs) she gets into yet another of her many problems. She models her character on Sharon Stone of Basic Instinct—of crossing and uncrossing legs fame. She does the same, but that has by now become old hat. But thanks to the talk show and the loquacious host Bobby Tomahawk (Hugh Dillon) the film is off to a good start. He calls her "tea cup." It works well up to the halfway mark but after that it runs out of steam. Director McDonald is obviously trying to project the heroine as "more sinned against, than sinning" and so we get flashes of her early traumatic days. Her liaisons and mishaps are many. A child of a broken marriage, she is on a self-destructing course. What’s more, she finds a similar persona in the convict. "You don’t care about the rules because you are beyond the rules, except the ones you make… because you are on the make. Like me," he says and it is soothing balm to her ears. But their phones are tapped. How long will the romance last. It is more the structure of the film that appeals to one, not the content but it keeps the viewer going for some time at least. It flatters only to deceive but Joely Collins, daughter of singer Phil Collins, is at best adequate and Ben Babs does a fair job as the convict but it is Hugh Dillon who steals the show in this average entertainer. |
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