A winter's tale

and publicity.''

Not that The Winter Guest should entail much difficulty in exciting public interest. Not least since the cast list includes Emma Thompson and her mother Phyllida Law playing mother and daughter. ''On paper it looks terrific, especially to the financiers,'' acknowledges Rickman with an ever so slightly sly grin. ''But of course in actuality it could have proved a nightmare. As it turned out they proved to be whatever the opposite of nightmare is - the mother and daughter thing was a gift in itself but also you got two very professional actors who wouldn't allow that relationship to intrude.

''There might be the odd moment when Phyllida would say that something was a bit too close for comfort and we don't want to talk about this too much. At other times their ease with each other was just so apparent. I think that's what I enjoyed most about it - the body language of people who know each other so well.''

The origin of Phyllida's occasional unease isn't too difficult to diagnose. The idea for The Winter Guest was born in conversations Rickman had with Lindsay Duncan, his

co-star in the RSC's production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. She talked about the relationship with her seriously ill mother, who was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

Nursing a close relative in those circumstances was equally familiar to Phyllida Law, whose own mother had died of the same complaint. And in the film she is asked to play Elspeth, an ageing woman who is confused both about her sense of self and of place. That in itself would have created an emotional minefield of the relationship with her daughter Frances, Emma's role. But the mix of anger, love and frustration is further complicated by the fact that Frances, recently widowed, is still trapped in the emotional aftermath of what had clearly been an immensely intense marriage.

These early exchanges with Duncan prompted Rickman to commission Scots playwright Sharman Macdonald to produce a stage play. The finished work drew heavily on Duncan's own experiences and both it and the film are dedicated to her mother, Helen Sinclair Robertson Smith. The stage version of The Winter Guest initially premiered in Leeds and, with Rickman directing, transferred to the London Almeida.

''The project just grew from there and became a sort of tidal thing,'' he says. ''Once the notion of the film had been mentioned you could feel it begging to be on screen.''

The transfer, nevertheless, would not be undaunting. The Winter Guest encompasses the interaction between not just one but four different couples, all different age groups, all with different preoccupations, and each relationship informed by a different dynamic.

So in addition to the sometimes tender, sometimes scratchy interplay between Elspeth and Frances, you have the first serious sexual encounter between her son Alex and his precocious pursuer Nita.

Intermingled during the same period of four hours in a long winter's day are the exploits of two 12-year-old boys who have decided the beach offers more stimulation than school, and two 65-year-old women whose social lives have become determined by which funeral offers the best social and gastronomic prospects.

The latter pairing was destined to fare least well in the editing process: ''It was hard on them because every one of their scenes was as joyous as any other and there are some real gems left behind on the floor. But in terms of balancing all the couples you couldn't let one start to dominate.

Linking the quartet was really about rhythm. When you've got the young boys, the elderly women, a mother and daughter and then scenes involving sex, there has to be a visual music happening between the various characters - different weights if you like - and the editing process was about feeling what energy was needed next. There are points where the characters cross, of course, and these were absolutely crucial - such as when Elspeth sits down and has a conversation between equals with one of the boys, or where the young boy touches Frances's hair and it becomes quite sensual for her, or the son is about to seduce the girl and sees the picture of his father. All of these moments are important in the film.''

Crucial too, self-evidently, was Macdonald's screenplay, not least because Frances, traumatised by bereavement, is a reluctant contributor to any conversation. ''In a sense she has to be kicked into speech, so my job was to say to Sharman I think it would help if we propel Elspeth into stumbling so that Frances has anger kicked out of her. But the words themselves are completely Sharman. She knows exactly the weight and colour of one word against another and what she wants it to do.

''She's very sculptural in the way she uses text and at once incredibly delicate and fantastically rigorous: it's filigree, but it's steel. We had to make some big changes in the editing because that's when one was discovering what editing is really about killing your babies! These words, these babies, have been carefully crafted and losing them is very difficult. But Sharman is very unsentimental about paring down.''

Macdonald, who impinged on most Scottish consciousnesses for the first time with When I Was A Girl I Used to Scream and Shout, has clearly lost none of her observational powers in the decade since then. For this is a film which both touches and amuses. One particular vignette with the schoolboys, involving the inadvisable application of deep heat treatment to stubbornly unimpressive genitalia, is achingly funny in sharp contrast to moments of tenderness and vulnerability.

''Sharman is a mother who listens acutely to her own family and their friends. She will tell you herself that almost everything she's written, like what parents say to their children, she's actually heard and often used verbatim. Her ears are everywhere.''

Despite which there is much ambiguity in the narrative; deliberately so, says Rickman. He declines, for instance, to spell out any detail about the condition from which Elspeth suffers: ''It was very important to Sharman and to me that no specific disease is mentioned, because that might have led to some people avoiding contact and supposing that dilemma had nothing to do with them. Instead I hope many people will recognise the moment where the child becomes the parent.

''In fact I hope for a point of contact for everyone because it's about every generation. The connections for women are easier, but I especially want men to go and see this film and see themselves as 12 year olds and 17 year olds.''

Neither is it specified precisely which guest winter brings to these eight disparate lives: ''For Sharman of course it's always been about death, but you don't want to say that in case it encourages people to go off and see some other movie! But another reason I don't want tangible labels to be put on anything is that I hope it will work on a subliminal level. The film is full of people falling and other people putting out a hand which is roughly rejected at first but finally accepted.''

The steep learning curve of a virgin film director proved an experience more exciting than scary, he tells me. ''I suppose the real difference is that in the theatre there can be nightly negotiations between the play, the actor, the director and the audience, and so you arrive at different places and the conversation continues during the run. With film you have to say that's a take and it will be there forever.

''But with film you're also surrounded by experts in every field so it's a wider term of reference at every point and there's a great thrill pulling together all those energies in the service of one piece of work,'' he adds.

''I still don't tire of watching the end product. The performances we got sustained me through a year of editing; I think what all eight of them do is miraculous at times. It's a lot to do with a crew that created an atmosphere the actors trusted. And then you see what's possible when actors will hand themselves over to a script and make themselves vulnerable and reveal as much as they do when they look and talk to each other.''

The ninth star of the film is Pittenweem in the East Neuk of Fife, which gives a typically gritty performance as the douce Scottish fishing village housing most of the action. Rickman found the geography of the little town almost perfect for his needs and considers the natives coped well with living in fake snow for the first half of last winter.

What proved more problematical was the creation of the frozen sea which is provides the central metaphor for much of the action. A disused airfield at Crail was pressed into service on which the backdrop of the harbour wall was erected, while Cupar housed a temporary studio for some of the interior shots and Elie contributed a lighthouse.

''Pittenweem in so many ways proved the ideal location. The siting of the house and the harbour and even the cafe were just right. The real problems came with the belated realisation that a frozen sea doesn't make any noise, but two-thirds of our action took place on the beach. So we spent a great deal of time looking for low tides.''

And time was often of the essence with Sandra Voe, one of the two older women, only having a week's shooting time available. ''But both she and Sheila Reid were in the stage performance, so we did a huge amount of work as to who they were and what they were about during the run of the play.

''Even so we needed some luck and we got it when it snowed genuinely and we were able to shoot both of them in a bus going through the snowy fields during that week. The snowfall also gave me the chance to film Phyllida as Elspeth, ploughing through the white landscape to get to Frances's house, a shot I always knew I wanted. So thank you up there to whoever fixed that for us!''

The Winter Guest, in one guise or another, has now made off with several years of Rickman's life. He doesn't disguise the fact that the two films he's made subsequently, back on the other side of the camera, have provided blessed relief. One of them, Judas Kiss, has yet to be completed and co-stars a certain Ms Thompson.

Yet he visualises a future where he can act and direct by turn as the work permits. ''There's no doubt that acting provides a huge amount of therapy. It lets you get rid of a whole lot of stuff. And for me it's about the only way of being allowed to be completely yourself. I've known that I think since I was a very small boy. But there's no reason why that can't go hand in hand with directing.''

And if there was a reason - if he ever

had to make a choice? ''Oh God, I'd never want to.''

On the evidence of this debut, he probably shouldn't have to.

meet Alan Rickman

l Odeon Cinemas, in conjunction with Scottish Screen, are holding a charity screening of The Winter's Guest at the Odeon Quay cinema, Glasgow, on Tuesday January 6, 1998, at 8pm. Tickets are #10 and all proceeds will go to Scottish Youth Theatre. Readers wishing to book tickets by credit card should contact the Box Office on 0141 418 0111, or send a cheque made payable to Odeon Cinemas Ltd., together with an SAE, to Odeon Cinemas, Springfield Quay, Paisley Road, Glasgow G5 8NP.

After the screening there will be a Question & Answer session, sponsored by The Herald Magazine, at which special guests Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson and Phyllida Law will field questions from the audience.

The Winter's Guest goes on general release from January 9.