The Winter Guest

A winter's day in a small Scottish town facing the sea. Frances is a photographer who lost her husband young and is thinking of leaving. Her mother Elspeth makes the journey out to her to try to talk to her daughter again. Other lives run alongside theirs the same day: two elderly women attend the funeral of someone they did not know, two boys skip school, and Frances's son Alex develops a crush on a girl. The only feature Alan Rickman directed, adapted from Sharman Macdonald's play, which he had already directed on stage. Emma Thompson plays Frances and her actual mother, Phyllida Law, plays her mother. The sea is frozen and the town is empty; the film takes place inside that silence.