Review: The Guest House
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image from peccapics.co.uk
The Guest House is written, directed and produced by Michael Baumgarten. Starring Madeline Merritt as Amy, the midwestern newcomer, and Ruth Reynolds as Rachel, the Los Angeles goth girl, the film tries to tell a steamy love story.
Yeah, I said “tries”.
You know how they say “write what you know”? Well, they do. And I’m not convinced Mr Baumgarten knows much about lesbians. I have images in my head of him stopping action and asking them for “more giggling” and demanding that makeup find progressively darker and more blinding shades of lipstick.
So, there’s a plot. Spoilers ahead.
We first meet “goth” Rachel (apparently “goth” in LA means “dark eyeliner”, “tramp stamp” and “black clothing”) and her very soon to be ex-boyfriend, Jason, breaking up. Then we meet Rachel’s dad, Frank. During their conversation, we establish that Rachel is “an adult” and that she is also grounded and unable to go out at night, even though her dad will be away all weekend. Obviously, like any normal 18 year old, she obeys. He also tells her that a new employee will be arriving to stay in their guest house. Also her mother is dead.
The new employee is Amy, a fresh-faced college grad who is new to Los Angeles. She’s got a job with Frank, Rachel’s super rich dad who does something and wants Rachel to follow in his footsteps and go to business school. Rachel is an aspiring songwriter. Amy, Frank’s new employee and recent college grad, agrees that business school sounds like a drag.
Since she’s grounded, Rachel spends her evening watching lesbian spanking porn and masturbating. Amy gets bored and decides to hang with the boss’ daughter, but instead ends up listening to her boss’ daughter have an orgasm and then running back to the guest house.
image from peccapics.co.uk
This is no will-they-won’t-they plot. It is clear from the start that they will sleep together. What may or may not be surprising is that they also fall in love. Since none of the characters in this film have consistent personalities (other than “8 Track Guy”, but he only has one line), it’s hard to see what they love so much about each other, but they do, so we’ll run with that.
They have sex on the bed, shower and in the hot tub. Like all women in American films, they replace their (matching) bras and panties after having sex. When they’re in the hot tub, Jason returns, looking for the mobile phone that, yes, Rachel did actually steal from him. Amy then calls him a pussy for not beating her up. Apparently, a bigger man would have.
At this point, I was praying for more giggling, glamorous L.A. shopping montages and acoustic guitar nights.
The big twist happens when Frank, Rachel’s dad, arrives home and it’s revealed that he had already boned Amy before she moved to LA. In fairness to Rachel, she’s disgusted, because she’s just spent the weekend having sex with her father’s sloppy seconds.
The creepiest thing is at the end when brunette Amy bleaches her hair and starts looking like Rachel’s dead mom. Also, that’s when Rachel decides to take Amy back. Maybe because looking like her mom makes it ok that she had sex with her dad. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. All I want right now is some whiskey.
The Guest House is available on DVD from June 18, 2012.
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lol@how this is turning...
Thanks for the review. If a film has even a lesbian sub plot I will usually watch it so starved of lady love on the Tv screens of Ireland as I am.
This on the other hand looks truly awful. Even the trailer looks badly acted (painfully so) and tacky. Including the what sounds like to me a rip off of a Tori Amos style sound track.
I just don’t understand what is so hard about making a film about two women falling in love. When it is done correctly as in ‘If these walls could talk 2′ among others its beautiful. I understand budget may be an issue but really can the characters not even try to look like they feel something? Anything? Okay rant over!
I am reluctant to lay any of the blame at the feet of the actors. The story itself is very badly done. And I suspect if the writer/director didn’t have his own production company, it would never have got made.
First, Amy should have had a lot more of a struggle before she fell into bed with her new boss’ daughter. I mean, she’s obviously ambitious, she’s moved to L.A. from Iowa for a job good enough that the boss lets her take his car and stay in his guest house until she’s set up. And yet? She throws it away within hours of arriving by hooking up with his barely legal daughter.
But, you see, angst would have taken screen time away from giggling lesbian sex.
And the thing about budgets? It’s not expensive to write a good story. It’s not EASY to write a good story, but it’s not hard to write a story better than that one. I would put money on there being thousands of screenplays discarded by readers every year that are superior to the story in this film. Thousands.
I am never going to stop ranting about how awful this film is.
I try to watch any lesbian film I can get my hands on.
This film was just terrible from the get go. The characters had potential but never moved beyond the giggly slumber party girls. Amy was boring, I assume she is meant to be in her early twenties but seems mentally to be in her teens. It might have been the constant giggling. Rachel is a goth girl who had the potential to be dark and deep but instead had aspirations to sing love songs. If she could actually sing it might have been a bit more convincing.
We also have more mother issues, seems to be a running theme in badly made lesbian films.
The ending freaked me out completely with the mother issues again. Really, who wants a potential partner to alter their looks so they look like your mother?
Wow, even the trailer made me cringe. I’m not so starved of lesbian films to watch that I’ll be wasting my time on this one. Thanks for the review.
I don’t know. The movie (just from the trailer alone) seems hoky. The female Oedipus/Electra storyline makes for one icky movie as well. Most of these films start (trouble character/ “professional” character) and end the same way with not much depth to the story or characters. Eh.
I do own a sizeable collection of gay and lesbian movies, among other genres – and I have to say I have watched, pretty much, everything out there, with a few exceptions… which I wish this was one.
Acting is bad, I know you don’t want to blame the actors for the failure of this flick, but truth be told, they are pretty bad – The whole time I was trying to find a slight connection between those two – something that would make me buy the idea that they were into one another – Nope, it didn’t happen. Jason? what a blabbering baby.. “where is my f****g phone?” – I felt like saying…”B***h, go to a mobile phone company and get another one..” oh wait.. baby doesn’t know how to do that? I couldn’t even believe Jason and the Goth were an item… the only thing I liked about Jason is… his lack to reel time, and the fact that he looks a lot like Robert Smith from The Cure (Boy’s Don’t Cry)…yeah, really…
The storyline was poor – the music.. OMG.. I kept picturing a very low budget chinese porn film soundtrack…they probably used a walmart electric organ for that.
Yes, it was a low budget, but so it was “Elena Undone, Everything Relative, Marine Story, The Gymnast, among others.. and these movies were very good in every sense of the word.