Gideon's Daughter (2005)

the audience applauded

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

I just love Poliakoff - apart from 'Perfect Strangers' which bored me immensely. I found 'Shooting The Past' to be breathtaking, but 'Gideon's Daughter' occupies a different space altogether. It's about a lot of things - celebrity, grief - expressed and unexpressed - forgiveness and redemption. It's also about love and friendship, and a place where the two overlap.I watched Bill Nighy closely throughout, and for me he never put a foot - or a hand, or a glance, or stare - wrong. Equally as exquisite was Miranda Richardson as Stella, the divorced woman whose son has died, and whose ex-husband (played by David Westhead) cannot let go of the need to 'right' a wrong.In a way, this film is about nothing at all, and yet it encompasses so much that I'm finding it difficult to review. Don't expect to understand it all - I didn't, but that could be my short-coming. But I loved it so much I want to see it again and again. I just hope others love it as much as did I.

Gideon's Daughter is a story of forgiveness and redemption. Gideon, an inveterate womanizer,leaves his young daughter, Natasha, at her mother's bedside while the mother lay dying. His phone calls to his women keep him away for 30 minutes. The mother dies and Natasha has no one there to comfort her. A homeless man has wandered into the room and sits beside Natasha, witness to the neglect at a critical time in her young life. This scene is one of the keys to understanding the story.Years later, Gideon witnesses a protest regarding the lack of care by motorists for children on bicycles. Gideon meets a bohemian woman named Stella who becomes his friend. Lest he is never able to forgive himself, Stella convinces him to borrow her camera to attend and tape a performance by Natasha as she prepares to graduate from high school. Natasha is now a beautiful and talented young woman. She performs a song regarding her father and his women.As Gideon develops a relationship with Stella, Gideon comes to learn of Stella's own lack of self-forgiveness over letting her young son go for his first bike ride without her. He is the child who was killed by a motorist during the protest Gideon had witnessed. This scene is also a key to understanding the story.As their relationship progresses, together Gideon and Stella find forgiveness and redemption.Kauffman "The supreme act of courage is that of forgiving ourselves. That which I was not but could have been. That which I would have done but did not do. Can I find the fortitude to remember in truth,to understand, to submit, to forgive and to be free to move on in time?"

How can be this simply story so touching? I kept asking this question for hours. Is it a parent-child relationship that everyone of us knows (at least from one of its sides) or is it something more? Or is it that lazy tempo that makes this movie so real? And I can't forget the totally beautiful song performed by Emily Blunt (Natasha). Bill Nighy's (Gideon) acting is perfect, too. Every scene in this film fits in it accurately and although the ending is filled with pathos, you'll have to like it. Because you want to believe that life goes that way. You have to see it and the best option is to watch it with your parents. It says things people should tell, but they don't.

There's always a lot to enjoy in any Stephen Polliakoff film: striking use of images and music, an interest in big questions, and the director's lack of fear of letting things run at a slow pace where this makes the story, and atmosphere, more absorbing. But there's also always a journey into a stylised world, and a tendency to set up a false dichotomy between an overly-schematised, and fake, business world, and an overly romanticised (and arguably no less fake) real world. Even when my sympathies lie with Polliakoff, I'm always frustrated by his failure to give our own side a sufficiently hard time. 'Gideon's Daughter' is not his most interesting film, largely because its central characters (a jaded spin doctor and his almost supernaturally beautiful, talented and serene daughter) are fundamentally quite dull. A moment towards the end of the film illustrates the problem succinctly: we see the main characters disappearing from a beautiful Edinburgh street, a street that it the real world in permanently busy with traffic and people but which here is shown devoid of cars and pedestrians alike: and while a director should be forgiven occasional moments of dramatic licence, when the entire drama is framed through such a distorted lens, though big questions may be asked, they're not really answered. This is a wonderfully crafted little film; but also a film that has very little relevance to the messiness of real lives.