Writer/Director: Alan Rickman

Alan Rickman's first screen role was in John McTiernan's Die Hard, following on from the Broadway run of the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," where his performance as Valmont had received a Tony nomination. Subsequently, for his work in Kevin Reynolds' Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Stephen Poliakoff's Close My Eyes and Anthony Minghella's Truly Madly Deeply, he was named Evening Standard Film Actor of the Year. For Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, he also received the BAFTA Award. His performances in Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility and Neil Jordan's Michael Collins both received BAFTA nominations, and he recently won Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG awards for his performance in Uli Edel's HBO production, "Rasputin." Rickman's other film performances include Tim Robbins' Bob Roberts, Mike Newell's An Awfully Big Adventure and Roger Spottiswoode's Mesmer, for which he won the Best Actor Award at the Montreal Film Festival.

WINTER GUEST
1997 / 35 mm / Couleur / 110 min.
Great Britain
CI.02.1

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Cast: Phyllida Law, Emma Thompson, Gary Hollywood, Arlene Cockburn, Sheila Reid, Sandra Voe, Douglas Murphy, Sean Biggerstaff, Tom Watson; Writer/Director: Alan Rickman, Writer: Sharman Macdonald; Producers: Ken Lipper, Edward R. Pressman, Steve Clark-Hall; Director of Photography, Seamus McGarvey; Production Designer, Robin Cameron Don; Editor, Scott Thomas; Composer, Michael Kamen; Costume Designer, Joan Bergin; Casting Director, Joyce Nettles.

The Winter Guest is set in a seaside town in Scotland on the coldest day in living memory, a day so cold even the sea has frozen solid. On this day, an elderly woman arrives uninvited and unexpected at the home of her grown-up daughter, offering a mother's usual unsolicited advice and opinions. As their story unfolds against a backdrop of frigid, seemingly implacable nature, The Winter Guest reveals the subtle, life-altering changes that occur just beneath the surface of human lives.

Elspeth (Phyllida Law) stubbornly picks her way across the icy streets of a coastal Scottish town to pay a visit to her daughter Frances (Emma Thompson). Frances, still paralyzed with grief following the death of her husband, does what many a daughter would do: she hides in the bathroom. Eventually, she emerges and the two women engage in the particular pas-de-deux of mothers and daughters. There is sarcasm and honesty, affectionate gestures and exasperated concern. At her mother's insistence, Thompson brings her camera on their walk on the windswept beach under the changeable winter sky. Photographing her mother, Frances sees Elspeth anew.

Juxtaposed against the interplay between Frances and Elspeth are the doings of three other pairs of local residents: Frances' son Alex (Gary Hollywood) and his new friend Nita (Arlene Cockburn); the old friends Lily (Sheila Reid) and Chloe (Sandra Voe); and schoolboys Sam (Douglas Murphy) and Tom (Sean Biggerstaff). Each of the four pairs will come together, draw back and reunite in a different place in their relationship, their rhythms echoing the eternal retreat and advance of the ocean tide.