The Winter Guest . Newcity Chicago . 01-20-98

The Winter Guest

DIRECTED BY: Alan Rickman

REVIEWED: 01-20-98

Actor Alan Rickman's directorial debut is an adaptation of Sharman Macdonald's play about the shifts in the lives of eight people in a Scottish seaside town on the coldest day of the year, when the ocean has frozen over. The look of the movie is simultaneously austere and luscious, but the arch screenplay, a tintinnabulous piano score and self-regarding performances by Emma Thompson and real-life mother Phyllida Law as a bickering mother-daughter duo really get on the nerves after a bit. There's a pair of wild cards in the deck, though: a pair of sex-obsessed pre-teen boys whose fears, worries and aspirations cut through the theatrical doldrums in curt bursts of burr-inflected profanity. I wanted a movie about them. I'd be amazed by what Macdonald and Rickman had devised for them, only to realize that in moments we'd be back to Thompson and Law. 110m.

--Ray Pride

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The Winter Guest
The Winter Guest

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The Winter Guest
The Winter Guest

Other Films by Alan Rickman
The Winter Guest

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