PASADENA, Calif. — Annette Bening didn't find it difficult to understand Jean Harris, the woman convicted of killing her unfaithful lover in the sensational Scarsdale diet-doctor murder case in 1980. Well, at least she didn't find it hard to believe that someone could be driven to murder.
"You've got to be kidding, right?" Bening said. "That's what is so fascinating about these stories, because we've all been there. We've all been right at the edge."
Bening stars in "Mrs. Harris" (9 p.m., HBO), a black comedy/drama that retells the story of the headmistress of an exclusive girls school who carried on a long-term affair with Dr. Herman "Hy" Tarnower (Ben Kingsley), author of the best-selling "Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet."
Bening and Kingsley turn in fine performances, but "Mrs. Harris" doesn't come off as planned. It's either a surprisingly passionless drama or a surprisingly unfunny comedy that flails around without ever figuring out what it wants to be. (And, this being HBO, expect R-rated language and sexual situations.)
Tarnower promised to marry Harris but never did. And while Harris tolerated his womanizing for years, Bening doesn't find it hard to believe that she finally reached her breaking point.
"I do think it's about that kind of relationship that you feel is out of your hands," she said. "And maybe all of us have been there once or twice, where it's not something you're the author of. You're experiencing it, and it takes hold of you. And I think for Jean, it was very much that.
"And that's why it is such a nightmare and such a tragedy and so very sad as well, because I think for her, she was just like all of us. And then one day that margin of behavior that we all hopefully come to and then don't cross, she was on the other side of it."
Bening — a k a Mrs. Warren Beatty — was quick to point out that she wasn't talking about any recent experiences in her own life. "No, but I mean that very seriously. I think that that's true in our lives. I mean, if you have children, if you're married, if you have a parent, which we all do, we've all felt those feelings."
Not that Harris admitted to that either then or now. She maintains she went to Tarnower's house to kill herself and that, when he tried to stop her, he was killed during the struggle for the gun. "She was convicted of murder, obviously, but she said she had no intention of killing him," Bening said.
"Mrs. Harris" shows both versions of Tarnower's death. At the beginning, we see what Harris said happened — that he was killed in the struggle for the gun. At the end, we see the version that sent Harris to prison — that she shot him in a fit of jealous rage.
And, if Harris' behavior in the movie sometimes seems, well, odd, that hasn't ended. When she found out HBO was making "Mrs. Harris," she contacted the producers and asked to speak with Bening.
It wasn't something Bening sought. She had done a lot of research on Harris — read two books, watched hours of interviews — and she was aware that the movie wasn't entirely sympathetic to Harris. "It was one of the reasons it was so hard to make a film about her. She's not an entirely sympathetic person. But she did want to speak to me, so I did speak to her."
Bening was "incredibly nervous" about the call but said Harris was "curious" that they were making a movie about her. "And she spoke very highly of him in the phone call. . . . She was incredibly complimentary of him, and she said he was a great dancer."
Really.
"They did really adventurous traveling together," Bening said. "She talked about that. She talked about what a great reader he was, that he would read up on where they were going. It's completely fascinating to talk to her. I was — and she said that when they were dancing, he made her feel like Ginger Rogers."
Of course, Ginger Rogers didn't kill Fred Astaire.
Weird.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com