THE WINTER GUEST (1997). Alan Rickman's directorial debut is an auspicious first film, a stark, sometimes stagy, surprisingly funny movie that's both cozy and insidiously unsettling. Based on the play by Sharman Macdonald, and set in a desolate Scottish coastal town on a winter's day so cold the sea has frozen, the movie brings together Frances (Emma Thompson), a photographer who's just lost her husband, and her mother, Elspeth (Thompson's real-life mother, Phyllida Law), the ostensible, unexpected guest of the title. Elspeth arrives to rouse her from her mourning; they stroll the monochromatic streets and seascape, Frances with camera at hand, and unknowingly join three other pairs of wanderers, whose sometimes intersecting paths Rickmandeftly follows. The director is most powerful, however, when wordless. Most compelling are his unabashed close-ups of faces: Thompson's astonishment as she sees her mother clearly at last and reaches for her camera is epiphanic. After this distinguished Guest appearance, Rickman shouldn't remain a stranger to directing.

Now playing at:

Jane Pickens Theater