THE WINTER GUEST
By Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Fine Line Features Director: Alan Rickman Writer: Alan Rickman, Sharman MacDonald, play by MacDonald Cast: Emma Thompson, Phyllida Law, Gary Hollywood, Arlene Cockburn, Sheila Reid, Sandra Voe, Douglas Murphy, Sean Biggerstaff
During the postwar years Great Britain has not only lost a huge empire but is threatened even now with the departure of its northern province, Scotland. Well, then, if the Scottish independence movement wants to hasten the UK's egress, it wouldn't hurt them to expose the powers-that-be to the film "The Winter Guest," based on a play staged in 1995 by Sharman MacDonald. The action takes place on the coldest day of the year in as remote an area as Atom Egoyan's Canadian wilderness in his "The Sweet Hereafter," a place that's so Godforsaken that if the ministers in London considered it representative of Scotland, they would wash their hands of the whole area with delight. Of course, this fishing village is as different from Edinburgh as Death Valley is from New York City, but the rural area does make for an effective backdrop to what is essentially a filmed, static play, in which inner action substitutes for outward adventure.
Under Alan Rickman's direction--which evokes some powerful acting from an ensemble of performers headed by Emma Thompson and her real-life mother Phyllida Law--"The Winter Guest" shows the transformation occurring in an assortment of people of varying generations and outlooks in quite a short period of time, a metamorphosis all the more surprising given the apparent shortage of stimulations that people in more urban areas enjoy. What Rickman has done in adapting MacDonald's play to the screen is to switch back and forth among four stories, weaving the disparate groups into a whole as story concludes. "The Winter Guest" is too slow and uneventful for the typical film audience. But if you want an antidote to Tarantino-style cinematography and story- lines, you couldn't find a movie with a style more dissimilar.
The core relationship is between Frances (Emma Thompson) and her vulnerable, interfering mother, Elspeth (Phyllida Law), the latter paying a surprise visit on her daughter shortly after the death of Frances's handsome husband. Frances, a gifted photographer who has suffered emotionally over her loss, has resorted to taking black-and- white photos of landscapes, even hiding in the bathroom when she hears the salutation of her aging mother. Elspeth's heart is in the right place. While she fears that her daughter will leave her alone, making good on her promise to move with her son Alex (Gary Hollywood) to Australia, she feels for Frances and is determined to cheer her up--to change the middle-aged woman's focus from death into a empathy for the living souls around her.
The small of people to whom we are introduced in the story have had time to cultivate their eccentricities, particularly two elderly women: the bulgy-eyed Chloe (Sandra Voe) and the more down-to-earth Lily (Sheila Reid), who get their kicks from reading obituaries and attending funerals. No matter that they care little about the departed and that they must wait in the icy weather for a bus that seems to pass the frozen stop but once a day. They celebrate the funerals with visits to a tea parlor where they close their eyes in ecstasy over slabs of fresh Napoleon served with piping hot pots of tea.
Youth get their representation through the coming of Alex's first sexual experience. Rickman milks the eroticism by filming a kind of extended foreplay-in-the-snow as Alex meets and banters with the gamin-like Nita (Arlene Cockburn)--a forward girl who resembles a young Liza Minelli and whose attraction to the red-haired Alex is palpable. Alex is conflicted about the approaching experience, offering the young woman his bathtub while she continues her seduction while wrapped in a large Turkish towel. In still another episode that adds comic relief, a pair of boys of about the age of fourteen (Douglas Murphy and Sean Biggerstaff) wander around the icy coastal area jesting about women and scoring some yocks from the audience when they discover a used condom.
The key relationship is obviously on the mother-daughter bond, one which begins like a mother-in-law joke as Frances freezes up at the visit of her carping mother but warms up enough to her to reconsider her proposed trip to antipodean lands. "The Winter Guest" is slow going, a theatrical movie that borders on preciosity, as we are exposed to the icy wilds of Scotland and to the flames, both real and metaphorical, that help to heat up the eight principals. Its real home is the stage, though we have Alan Rickman to thanks for allowing a greater audience into the recesses of his characters through the medium of the cinema. Rated R. Running Time: 110 minutes. (C) 1997 Harvey Karten
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