Joe Turner returns to Great Britaintwenty years after he ended a romantic relationship with Ann. He discovers her running the same hotel in a picturesque seaside resort in Dorset, but now with a grown daughter named Joanna. The principal action of the film is the attempt of the adults to renew their relationship, with interference from the daughter, who flirts with Joe from the moment she meets him, successfully competing with her mother for his attention. Most of the film consists of conversations between the characters, mingled with shots of the nearby seashore. Days into Joe's return an argument with Ann results in him leaving. However he has a change of heart while walking to the railway station and returns. Arriving back at the hotel, Joe unexpectedly discovers one of the women, later revealed to be Joanna, offering herself to him in his bedroom, and he wordlessly accepts her invitation. The following morning Joe and Ann attempt continue their relationship, but the evening ends with Joanna revealing her and Joe's affair. Ann responds by locking Joanna in her bedroom, while Joe agrees to leave for a few weeks and then come back to Ann. After Ann goes to bed Joanna escapes out of her window, lets herself back into the hotel and finds Joe sitting alone downstairs. His initial attempts to send her back to her room fail and Ann soon catches the lovers in mid-coitus. She calmly informs Joe that she lied to him when he asked earlier who Joanna's father was, and she said the father was dead - the father was in fact Joe. The next day one of the women leaves the resort by train, while Joe stays with the other and talks about fixing the place up. He sits down to play cards with the remaining woman, who makes no response, and whose face is not shown.
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." 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." 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." 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." 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."
