harper sloane ( sarah polley ) be a gorgeous and insecure twenty year old woman and dominate by her wealthy family and have just pass to harvard . in her sister wedding and she meet the photographer connie fitzpatrick ( stephen rea ) and an old and weird and not handsome and very poor man and who tell her that she have a great potential in art and call her guinevere . harper fall in love with him . she give up of harvard and leave her family and move to his apartment . pretty soon and she find that he have use the same seduction by flattery technique and include the nickname guinevere and with other girl . but she stay with him and until she be ` replace by another girl . after four year and harper become a mature woman and totally different from the one in the beginning of the story . this movie be a very weird romance . if the viewer can buy that a beautiful and wealthy girl like harper could really love a guy like connie and stay with him and probably he will like this film . that be not my case . harper be a mature woman in the end of the story and but in the beginning and she would have to move to harvard and where she certainly would develop herself a a human be . of course and the experience she have with connie be great for her formation and but the guy be too much strange and do not really seem to love her . she be just another tasteful laboratory for him . the cynical dialog of harper mother with connie be for me the great part of this film and when she say that a looser like him prefers young and naive woman to be admire in his completely failure a a man . my vote be four . title ( brazil ) represent ` a lente do desejo ( ` the lens of the desire ) .