Hors saison

The scene of the action is a closed-down, dilapidated hotel in the Swiss mountains which has been lying empty for some time. The hotel used to belong to the narrator's grandparents, and it was there that he was born and brought up. He visits the hotel for the last tim with the intention of losing himself in memories connected with the old building.

"Swiss director Daniel Schmid grew up in a hotel in the Swiss Alps, one very much like the fictional hotel he portrays in 'OFF SEASON', raised by his widowed mother and grandmother. 'OFF SEASON' re-imagines this grand edifice, drenched in a child's fantasy, as his adult narrator (Sami Frey) flashes back to the colorful and mysterious happenings he was privy to. The boisterous grandmother, played with personality by Federico Fellini's sister Maddalena, is the center of a story that has all the intricacy of a Chinese box. Characters include an anarchist assassin (Geraldine Chaplin) the legendary actress Sarah Bernhard (Marisa Paredes), a magician (Ulli Lommel), a pair of torch singers, and assorted dazzling and seductive women who prowl the corridors with late-night business. Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Reader wrote, "One of the nicest as well as most personal of the movies of Daniel Schrnid is this semiautobiographical reverie, Fellini-like in a good sense.
If Stanley Kubrick set nightmares in the Overlook Hotel, Daniel Schmid has only the happiest magical memories to animate his grand hotel nestled in the Swiss Alpes. Hors Saison is an unabashed cinematic circus populated by a Fellini-like cast of caricatures. It is irony and good humour make it high-class, entertainment for family audiences as well as the director's art house fans.
Variety