Review: Emma Thompson warms a chilly 'Winter Guest'

February 2, 1998
Web posted at: 10:34 p.m. EST (0334 GMT)

From Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- I suspected there would eventually be trouble with first-time director Alan Rickman's "The Winter Guest" before the opening image even hit the screen. Over total blackness, the initial sound you hear is the forlorn cry of some seagulls that, no doubt, are swooping over a vast, empty beachfront. Bergman style. Well, I was right about the setting, but Rickman gets to delve even deeper into the tortured artist trip by dropping the temperature and freezing the lake rock solid.

Cold, gray, foreboding, and based on a play (Tatara's Law of adapting plays for the screen: Don't), it's amazing that "The Winter Guest" is as interesting as it turns out to be, which is a little bit, but not all that much. Rickman, who most people probably know as the bad guy in "Die Hard" or as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Kevin Costner's version of "Robin Hood," is a sober, usually level-headed actor, and his interest in wringing finely tuned performances from his cast is what saves "The Winter Guest" from complete trying-too-hard mediocrity.

Emma Thompson stars as Frances, a widower who cannot shake the overpowering memory of her recently deceased husband. Her 17-year-old son, Alex (played by Gary Hollywood, no relation to Gary Glitter), is trying to help her through the trauma, but Frances has shut herself off from everyone else in her world, at least to the degree that she refuses to talk about the one subject that's continually on her mind. Frances is a photographer, so the house is covered with photos of her beloved husband. Since his death, she's taken a job in which she no longer photographs human beings. That's deep, in case you didn't notice.

Her mother, played by Thompson's real-life mom, Phylidia Law, shows up one cold, cold morning to lend moral support, even though Frances would obviously like to be as far away from the old woman as humanly possible. Frances locks herself in the bathroom and runs the water to cover up the sound of Mom's vaguely-remembered anecdotes about her daughter's childhood. Thompson sits down on the floor in the bathroom and presses her hands over her ears while Law prattles on in a Scottish accent that could just about peel paint. Poor Frances can barely hold back the tears. A quiet piano plays a few lonely notes. God only knows what the seagulls are up to.

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Meanwhile, out on the beach, Alex strikes up a flirtation with Nita (Arlene Cockburn), a rather cynical teen-age girl who has a crush on him. Seeing that his mother and visiting grandmother have left for a stroll (an odd way to pass the time when it's about 9 degrees outside), Alex takes the girl back to the house where, you can be sure, they'll grow haltingly erotic and we'll witness a tender deflowering scene.

You see, what we're getting here is a series of vignettes showing people in different developmental stages of their lives. Rickman also periodically cuts to a couple of old women who are leaving the village on a bus to attend a funeral, as well as a pair of pre-pubescent boys who are playing hooky from school. Aside from the young boys (one of whom applies some medicated heating rub to his penis in an ill-advised attempt to get it to grow), everyone speaks with a near-poetic near-perceptiveness that's the verbal equivalent of near-beer, if you ask me.

But the performances are impressive. Thompson is always good, and she adds a much-needed sense of bemusement to the proceedings. Her precise use of the wry glance (as Mom chatters away for what seems like hours) defuses a lot of the more obvious dialogue, and turns her character into the most ingratiating one of the bunch. Law is also solid, but the character is plain old whiny. You can fully understand Frances' desire to run away from her (there's talk of her fleeing to Australia), and the inevitable warming process that the two go through is not altogether convincing because of it. There's also some nice cinematography by Seamus McGarvey, but the final product is nowhere near as heart-rending as everyone involved seems to think it is.

Lighten up guys. It's not that bad, regardless of what the seagulls may think.

"The Winter Guest" contains some profanity and a brief glimpse of teen-age nudity. Otherwise, there's nothing too shocking going on. Rated R. 110 minutes.

Related sites:

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• The Internet Movie Database (US)
  • Winter Guest, The (1997)
• The Winter Guest (official site)

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