Very Cool!!!

An Exercise In Nonsense

A Major Disappointment

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

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?"

"Gideon's Daughter" brings to a TV film a trend that is mostly obvious in literary fiction – the middle-aged man who thinks he is the center of the universe and the whole world revolves around him, and faces some kind of break down if any of his women show a bit of independence.Written and directed by playwright Stephen Poliakoff, he mines similar territory as Cheever, Updike, Ford, Amis, Roth, etc. thrust into the center of English celebrity and political culture. The theme is even awkwardly made redundant by an odd structure of having another middle-aged man tell the tale to another pretty young woman and a mysterious kid.Here, Bill Nighy's media consultant only perceives such events as Princess Diana's death or the upcoming millennium in terms of how it affects him. In press interviews, Nighy has said that Poliakoff intentionally directed him to play the main character as "stripped" but one certainly doesn't see how this catatonic schmoozer even got to his professional pinnacle. His past and current sexual adventures certainly seem more male fantasy than anything based on his charisma of any kind.Tom Hardy, who was quite captivating as Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester in the recent Queen Elizabeth I mini-series, shows much more suitable feistiness, as a cross between Jeremy Piven's agent in "Entourage" and Bradley Whitford's canny adviser in "The West Wing."Miranda Richardson has the stereotyped role we've seen many times before of the quirky stranger (she dresses like an old hippie) from another class and lifestyle, but with a pained past with a child, who tempts him to play hooky and more. It is startlingly different for this genre that she is close to age appropriate.A creepy centerpiece, and repeating motif, is the consultant's daughter (Emily Blunt getting to show little of the passion she displayed in "My Summer of Love") singing a lovely ballad in tribute to philanderer Georges Simenon's suicidal daughter. The story is particularly weakened by not seeing more of Blunt's life when she's not being the adoring daughter.I really didn't get that a neglectful father who suddenly discovers he has paternal feelings is then to be considered "obsessive" rather than finally normal, even as she's about to leave the nest. His growing realization of his feelings is the best part of the film but a theme that all parents and grown children need to reconcile as adults-to-adults just drifts off.

I saw this and thought it would be excellent as I am a great fan of Miranda Richardson, Bill Nighy and Stephen Poliakoff, and contrary to the total slating some people have given it, I thought it was great! The only thing is, I reckon you have to be ready to look deeply into what is actually happening because I (being a drama/English Lit student) thought it was brilliant, but my less creative friends thought it was dull. So you have to be kind of out there, looking deeper into the relationships formed and how the dynamics work blah blah. Excellent performances by Nighy and Richardson (goes without saying - the "video camera" scene in the car is really natural!)and some beautiful cinematography. Gideon's Daughter is a complete contrast to the also excellent The Lost Prince, another Poliakoff/Richardson formula which was probably more successful because it was on a "real" level.