Guarding Tess. - movie reviews

Christian Century, June 15, 1994 by James M. Wall

A FRIEND OF MINE told me that she had been deterred from seeing Guarding Tess by the previews. That's too bad, for the film offers a sensitive look at the relationship between a secret service agent and the lonely widow of a former president. it's a picture that needs time to build; its power cannot begin to be explored in previews that explode with the subtlety of beer commercials. This is a film marketed as a comedic adventure tale when it is really an examination of intimacy. Special agent Doug Chesnic (Nicholas Cage) suffers the secret service version of being sent to Siberia when he is assigned the job of protecting Tess Carlisle (Shirley MacLaine), the president's widow, in the small Ohio town to which she returns after her husband dies in office.

The job is especially tedious because Carlisle, who misses the excitement of White House days, is increasingly depressed. Chesnic had been in charge of her husband's protective detail before his death, and apparently she requested that he join her in Ohio. "Apparently" is the operative word. Like much else in their relationship, this fact is implied--a subtle form of storytelling that comes as a pleasant surprise. The film relates how this younger man and older woman, both angry at the circumstances that removed them from the center of power, find themselves involved with each other.

The substance of their connection is revealed in small moments in which Chesnic begins to understand the pain of a woman whose power has been reduced to control of her security detail. Director Hugh Wilson presents these moments with a delicate touch, as in his distant shot of the widow sitting alone by a lake or lying in bed watching a tape of her husband's nomination and fast-forwarding to the funeral, at which the camera quietly notices Chesnic weeping. Wilson also wrote the script, which contains some perceptive dialogue and enough surprises to entertain. Especially striking is the sequence that depicts, first, the intense excitement aroused when the new president announces that he will visit Ohio to dedicate a wing of the Carlisle presidential library, and then Tess's disappointment when the president cancels the trip. Some critics have complained that the closing section, in which Tess is physically threatened, veers off into a different movie. But that threat is needed to solidify Chesnic's connection to her. Wilson's filmmaking skills are most apparent as he shows the danger not through violent action but through the reaction of two people who discover how much they mean to one another.