If the critic has validated the Curator's work, Polly thinks, maybe there is hope for her own photographs. So she sends them to Gabrielle anonymously, only to have them shot down as hopelessly inept.
Her spirit is crushed. But there are more discoveries for her to make.
She finds, for example, that Gabrielle has a lover, a woman named Mary, and that Mary, not Gabrielle, actually created the painting that the critic liked. It may be that the Curator lacks not only talent, but taste.
It is only gradually, while we're watching this movie, that we realize it is as much about Gabrielle as Polly and that we are permitted to make discoveries about Gabrielle that Polly herself only dimly suspects. The movie was written and directed by Patricia Rozema, who uses a seemingly simple style to make some quiet and deep observations. What happens to Polly in the movie is easy to anticipate; she learns to trust in mermaids. What happens to Gabrielle is that she is closely observed and skillfully dissected.
When the movie is over, we leave thinking of Polly, and I have even read reviews in which the movie is treated entirely as Polly's story. That is partly because of McCarthy's extraordinary performance in the role; she has one of those faces that speaks volumes, and she is able to be sad without being depressing, funny without being a clown.
She strikes just the right off-center note for the narration of the film; she must not seem to sure of herself, because the movie must not seem too sure of what it wants to say. It works by indirection, and Polly is actually only the instrument for the real story here, of a lonely and proud woman whose surfaces are flawless but whose sadness is deep.
If you see this movie and then have occasion to read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," which contains lines that strike some readers with the force of a blow, reflect that the narrator of the poem is more like Gabrielle than Polly. More like the Curator, who has measured out her life in coffee spoons, who has seen the moment of her greatness flicker, who lacks the strength to force the moment to its crisis, who grows old. Polly is, I suspect, intended to be out there with the mermaids, neither stupid nor mistaken, but a saint.
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