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.

In his directorial debut, Alan Rickman brings together two of Britain's most august talents, Academy Award-winner Emma Thompson and her mother Phyllida Law, to portray a pair of strong-willed individuals at a unique moment in their history together. 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. Thompson's character is a photographer; and, like a photographic portrait, the film casts light on both the minute details and the broad outlines of its subjects, shading and defining with robust, ever-present humor. Recurring images of fire, warmth and touch suggest the comfort and love that carry us beyond our fears and frailties.

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.

Fine Line Features is proud to present The Winter Guest, an Edward R. Pressman/Ken Lipper Production, directed by Alan Rickman, written by Sharman Macdonald and Alan Rickman. It was adapted from Macdonald's play, which Rickman directed and Lipper produced at West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds and at London's Almeida Theatre in 1995. The film stars Phyllida Law (Emma, Much Ado About Nothing) and Emma Thompson (Sense and Sensibility, Howard's End, The Remains of the Day), and was produced by Ken Lipper, Edward R. Pressman and Steve Clark-Hall. Seamus McGarvey was the director of photography, and Scott Thomas the editor. The Winter Guest is being distributed by Fine Line Features in the U.S. and Capitol Films internationally.

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