Warning! Contains spoilers
My girlfriend's flatmate walked in on us watching this DVD and
backed away, convinced he had interrupted a 'special' kind of
screening. It's easy to mistake Michael Baumgarten's film for a low
budget softcore flick, but it lacks credentials to even be classed
as that.
The Guest House cant decide whether it wants to be taken
seriously as a film or just sold as titillating fodder for the
couples market. But it misses the mark on so many levels to be
considered for the former and the sex is just too boring and
unimpassioned to satisfy the latter.
The Guest House is 83 minutes of prelude to action that never
arrives. Its main character is bad girl Rachel (Ruth Reynolds)
(eyeliner, check; pink hair dye, check) who was a cheerleader until
a death in the family drove her to Slipknot. Baumgarten shoehorns
in the family tragedy note with galumphing finesse. Rachel's father
(a very shouty actor) owns a guesthouse in LA, he's shagging away
from home and leaves Rachel in charge for the weekend to settle in
the new guest, wink nudge. Amy (Madeleine Merritt) turns up with a
reservation and surprisingly she isn't unattractive!
The two women interact as if they're reading an autocue over
each other's shoulders 'have you ever been in love' 'I've always
been sexual'. The script is so awful and the dialogue so laboured
that you can see the clichés looming before they limp out of the
actor's mouths. Amy: 'wow nice Jacuzzi'. Pencil in Jacuzzi scene in
ten minutes.
One 'girly!!!' shopping trip and metres of stock footage of LA
later, the girls are back at the guest house and Rachel is giving
Amy a feeble massage or was it Amy massaging Rachel? The characters
are so 2D that their hair colour becomes the only way of telling
them apart. Post-massage they have some lacklustre sex and the
actors work really hard to pretend to care about each other.
Baumgarten's big plot reveal is that Amy actually slept with
Rachel's dad in a past life! Everyone acts very upset/angry (though
it's quite hard to tell what emotion these actors are going for).
Amy apologises to her new lesbian love about the
whole-sleeping-with-her-father thing, but defends herself by saying
'he had really nice cologne on and made me laugh' - yes, she really
said that. Urgh.
There really is nothing to commend this film, which is a shame
because Pecadillo Pictures usually distribute intelligent gay
cinema. Here the characters are badly written, the production poor
and the score beiger than beige. It is ample ammo for the argument
that men cannot write female characters, but it would come as a big
surprise if Baumgarten could write male ones. If you're looking for
a lesbian film - hunt elsewhere. This film's only claim to LGBT
issues is having two very femmey members of the same sex feign
interest in each other. It is written and directed by a man and it
shows.
When the film ended and I was free to resume my life, the DVD
player automatically started playing it again - for an awful moment
I got a glimpse into a world where The Guest House is continually
on loop…
The Guest House is available from DIVADirect, at £14.99. Click
here to buy
