A strange, beautiful film. We watch mother and son as they go about their peculiar daily routine, and we see a dead child in the ocean. It's unnerving and, somehow, everything seems eerily sexual, too. Then we are invited to go underwater where we get a closer look at the strange story science and earth have to tell. There are only mothers and sons in this coastal town. There is routine and control - but who is in control and what happens if someone starts to ask que find out more...

It's the off-season at the lonely Beauregard Hotel in Bournemoth, and only the long-term tenants are still in residence. Life is stirred up, however, when the beautiful Ann Shankland arrives to see her alcoholic ex-husband, John Malcolm, who is secretly engaged to Pat Cooper, the woman who runs the hotel. Meanwhile, snobbish Mrs Railton-Bell discovers that the kindly if rather doddering Major Pollock, played by David Niven, who won an Oscar for his performance, a retired officer who likes to find out more...