I saw Phillis Nagy’s Mrs. Harris, an HBO movie that will air sometime in early ’06, at Roy Thomson Hall last night with two women friends who are…well, agreeably seasoned. The film is a restrained (read: more than a bit dull) account of the downfall of Jean Harris (Annette Bening), the teacher who shot and killed Scarsdale Diet guru Herman Tarnower (Ben Kingsley). The film reminds us that powerful men who are used to getting what they want can be heartless dogs, and that women of taste and refinement sometimes throw caution to the wind in getting involved with guys of this sort, and that sometimes, if you’re really blue and feel pushed to the edge, you can just lose it and want to shoot somebody…yourself, for instance. It’s a huge bummer of a movie, so much so that one of the women I came with left without saying goodbye…she just walked out of the theatre talking on her cell phone, offering nary a word of farewell or even a wave from across the room. Things would have been different if she had come with us to the In Her Shoes screening at Roy Thomson a couple of nights ago, which I invited her to. That movie leaves you in a very nice place.