Plot
Joe Turner returns to a picturesque seaside resort twenty years after he ended a romantic relationship with Ann, who still owns and runs the same hotel where he knew her, but she now has a grown daughter named Joanna. Joe and Ann attempt to renew their relationship, but with interference from Joanna, who flirts with Joe from the moment she meets him and competes with her mother for his attention.
Days into Joe's return, an argument with Ann leads to him leaving, but Joanna follows him in the car and asks him to stay. He ignores her, but late that night he returns to the hotel. In his bedroom, Joe unexpectedly discovers one of the women [whose face is not shown to the audience], offering herself to him, and he wordlessly joins her in bed. The following morning, Joe joins mother and daughter for breakfast in buoyant mood, and he and Ann continue to revive their relationship, but the evening ends with Joanna announcing to the other two that she had been with Joe the previous night. Joe says nothing, but Ann responds by physically dragging Joanna upstairs and locking her in her bedroom. Joe agrees with Ann that he will leave for a few weeks, to attend to some business he has in London, and then come back.
After Ann goes to bed, Joanna escapes out of her window and lets herself back into the hotel, where she finds a drunk Joe sitting alone downstairs. His initial attempts to send her back to her room fail, and he succumbs to her advances and they lay down naked together. Ann finds them in the act and coldly tells Joe that she had previously lied to him when she said Joanna's father was dead, and says there was never anyone else after him, implying that Joe is Joanna's father.
The next day, one of the women is seen leaving the resort by train, while the other woman remains with Joe at the hotel, but their faces are not shown. Joe talks about fixing up the place before next summer season, and sits down to play cards with the woman. [2]
Reception
Variety said: "Virtually a three-hander, Out of Season boasts top-notch performances by Redgrave, Robertson and George, a taut script and first-rate direction. Bridges displays his ability to develop and hold obsessive situations, all hints and innuendos, and this ping pong match of the affections often has the suspense of a whodunit." [5] TV Guide awarded the film three stars, commenting: "A small cast in a tight environment makes this film look like exactly what it is - a stage play adapted for the screen." [2] Time Out noted: "The super-smooth Alan Bridges finds himself landed with an impossible project. The dire script wrings every possible cliché out of the situation. The biggest mystery is why this stagey stuff was filmed at all, and why a cast of this calibre should have bothered." [6]
Texas Monthly said: "Out of Season cannot be tolerated at any time of year. If ever a project called for an executioner, this was it, and the presence of Redgrave, Robertson, George and the underrated director Alan Bridges, should not fool anyone into thinking that this frail mash note to father-daughter sex is a Certified Art Film." [7] Film Review Digest Annual wrote: "With Out of Season, it's a shame that so much tender loving care was expended on so uninteresting a film. Whatever it was in Reuben Bercovitch and Eric Bercovici's wan story that intrigued England's gifted Alan Bridges fails to come across." [8]
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