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The
Winter Guest
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There is something naïve, even primitive about the introductory sequence of Alan Rickman's directorial debut, The Winter Guest. Courageous old Elspeth (Phyllida Law) struggles through the icy streets of a small Scottish town, determined to reach her recently widowed daughter, Frances (Emma Thompson). As Elspeth inches along without her walking stick, almost falling, Frances tosses and turns violently in her bed – as if cursed with a premonition of the trying time in store for her. The Winter Guest is about the difficult bonds of family and friendship. For all the mutual exasperation that passes between Elspeth and Frances as they spend their day outdoors, we come to appreciate the love and understanding that unites them. They are contrasted with a local pair of old chums, Lily (Sheila Reed) and Chloe (Sandra Voe), whose own excursion reveals a different set of defences, sympathies and rituals. Discreet glimpses of Frances wailing out her grief alone in the landscape, and Elspeth before a mirror longing for a man to touch her, suggest a tougher, more primal portrait of the mother-daughter relation, in the vein of Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata (1978). However, Rickman and co-writer Sharman Macdonald (on whose play the piece is based) minimise the potential for melodramatic power-plays or anguished soliloquies. This film wears its inventory of wintry regrets lightly. Loss of health and beauty, disillusionment, loneliness, lack of success or recognition – all these terrors haunt the characters, but are balanced with an appeal to the ever-renewed cycle of life, to the laughter and small occasions for joy found almost every day. The younger characters are especially appealing. Frances's teenage son, Alex (Gary Hollywood), undergoes a small courtship dance with no-nonsense Nita (Arlene Cockburn), in the process unburdening a few of his own weighty demons from the past. Two boys, Tom (Sean Biggerstaff) and Sam (Tom Watson), wag school to exchange surprisingly wise, sardonic quips about the adult world – and, in one hilarious scene, check whether Deep Heat can augment a growing lad's penis size. Rickman attempts to hide the project's theatrical origins by making a feature of the fearsomely cold Scottish landscape, and cutting mechanically between four different story threads. The sum effect, however, remains static and leaden. At one point, Frances asks Elspeth to admire the pictorial movement in one of her still photographs. "If you want movement", the old woman advises, "make a film!" But not this film. © Adrian Martin March 1998 |
