Waiting Women - Kvinoors Vantan

WAITING WOMEN
KVINOORS VANTAN
U.S. title: Secrets of Women

Ingmar Bergman ~ 1952 ~ Sweden ~ b&w

Three women discuss their various sexual awakenings ~ through marriage, infidelity and lost loves ~  as they wait for their husbands to arrive for the Summer.

Simple as the premise may be, Bergman’s use of composition and especially of light-and-darkness here is exemplary, exploiting black-and-white photography to its fullest. The first story is a sun-drenched tale of angst and unfaithfulness. The central threesome verbally barter with, seduce and injure one another in the best Bergman style. The second tale is near-silent, cloaked in shadows and often startling images. A seduction is played out using almost solely a man’s hand; half-seen images and shadows are sinister, although ordinary in origin ~ all creating the paranoid and dream-like state of the female protagonist.  The third episode uses a faulty lift for dramatic and comedic effect; here again the faulty light makes maximum use of atmosphere. This last tale is also evidence that Bergman can amuse where perhaps ‘Now, about these women’ felt strained and ‘A Lesson in Love’ a little too light.

What perhaps is most surprising is that, for all the dark corners, all the pains, ‘Waiting Women’ is profoundly optimistic. Wonderful moments in a slightly seedy nightclub, by the river, in the lift, all remain memorable and masterfully executed. And then, as always, it is the performances that truly elevate Bergman’s bright-but-troubled backdrops. There are several familiar faces from his other films, but Dahlbeck and Bjornstrand in the elevator deserve special credit. 

Foregrounding women’s concerns and forgiveness, ‘Waiting Women’ is both easy and insightful.    

"We Are the Best" and punk as the sweetest thing.

By chance, I happened to see “Spring Breakers”, “We Are the Best” and “Locke” consecutively and each seemed to say something about the other in comparison.  

WE ARE THE BEST

 "Vi är bäst!"

Lukas Moodyson, 2013, Sweden

 

In tales of “good girls gone bad”, as it were, “We Are The Best” proves a delightful and modest tale of growing up for three Swedish teenage girls forming punk band in the early Eighties. It is not so much coming-of-age, which perhaps implies some lesson learnt, but more just growing up and trying to get noticed, make your mark, have friends, have fun and trying to assert your identity. The young women in Harmony Korine’s “Spring Breakers” dive into a world of hedonism trying to find themselves, trying to work out who they are: the just-teen girls of Moodyson’s “We Are The Best” seem to already know who they are, but just need to work out the world around them with that information in mind. Bobo is shy but also aware and quietly as sure of herself and as playfully rebellious as her outspoken, politicised best friend Klara (Mira Glosin). These are punk-posing kids, but they aren’t mean or stupid. They’re just bored of the hypocrisies they see in the adult world around them and just want to push back a bit and have a good time: punk happens to be the language and medium that they use.

So, fed up with onset of crap disco and new wave around them, as well as being told that they are ugly, the girls hilariously blag themselves some rehearsal space at the expense of the local prog-rock band just to get back at them and to shake things up. And so, inadvertently, they find themselves in a band. They have no skill but lots of attitude and they know what they don’t like, all good for inventing a punk band from nothing. And what they don’t like is gym class, so they have quickly put together an anti-sport, anti-mainstream song. But they can’t play, so they cheerfully set about befriending and recruiting quiet Christian girl Hedvig because she can actually play guitar. Of course, her Christianity is totally against what Klara and Bobo are against – being the apparent home of conformity and conservatism – but it doesn’t stop her joining the band and turning punkish herself. Indeed, perhaps the most moving moment in this joyfully rambling and naturalistic film is when Bobo and Klara begin to properly learn how to play their first proper notes and start to hear their anti-sport song coming together, or their simple realisation that changing a lyric can improve a song. Oh, they aren’t interested in any craftsmanship, but anyone who creates art can surely take delight in these adorable girls taking their first proper steps as artists of some sort. The conversion of their boredom and general teenage disaffection into music is a fantastic act of development and personal growth.

The film may be a soft-natured affair, but its strength is a nuanced and unfussy respect for offhand humour, for the teenage condition and the growth of an artist and friendships between three girls. It falls into light but mature tales of growing up such as “My Life as a Dog” and “Boy” and “Ake and his World”, but also spiced with the rebellion of music. Based upon the graphic novel by Moodyson’s wife Coco, it is a more convincing confection than the contrived miseries of his “Lilya4ever”. There will be many particular Swedish jokes and details that will be missed by non-Swedes, but it has plenty of material recognised to anyone who has been an outsider kid. Never once does the film let itself talk down to these kids by circumscribing their innate maturity and goofiness with cheap drama: this is just their friendship and they learn perhaps nothing more than how to play a song to piss off people and then to act up a lot over the end credits. These are good girls going not so much bad but punking around for fun and to go against the grain.

For comparison, look at Harmony Korine's "Spring Breakers".
 

ADVENTURES IN FILM #1

FAVOURITE SCENES: “LET THE RIGHT ONE IN”: the pool scene.

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Occasionally, a film makes you say something aloud, or shout something at the screen. Oh, I have seen people calling advice and names at “EastEnders”, cursing the news, but that’s not what I mean. I have heard stories of audiences shouting at screens things such as “I would kill that guy!” and so on, but that’s not what I mean. I am talking about something even more primal. I am talking about when the film you are watching and all the elements - sound, vision, mis-e-scene, pacing, atmosphere, characterisation, etc - coalesces into pure story and all the elements hit the right note suddenly you realise how film reaches places you maybe never quite knew were there in a film. And you say something out loud because you are delighted and in awe.

I was watching “Let The Right One In”, with love, soaking it all in, thinking what a brilliant horror and brilliant bildungsroman it was… I was totally invested in Oskar’s situation, fearful for him as a victim of bullying, as a somewhat naïve and sweet soul, fearful of him as his unresolved need for revenge seemed to tap into the latent psychopath squirming in his gut and the hand that held the pen-knife. His relationship and investment in Eli, who remains impregnably enigmatic, was fraught with danger and gore and alive with affection and loyalty. But how were they going to resolve it?

Horror endings, especially, are notoriously weak, disappointing, stupid. I am a horror fan, but it’s the truth. But I had not read Lindqvist's novel, so I had no idea how it would sort itself out, or not.

And then: the pool scene.

The bullies have contrived to corner unsuspecting Oskar in the pool, where he is trying to do something for himself (now that Eli has gone) by learning to swim. They, on the other hand, have come to punish him for whacking the chief bully about the head with a stick, costing him his ear. Chief bully has brought along older brother, who is evidently of a more murderous nature. Chief bully’s henchmen don’t seem so sure, seemingly equally scared of carrying out the increasing cruelty and scared of not doing as they are told and losing … status? Power? Comradeship?

Then there is only Oskar and the four bullies, no one else, and the brother is holding his head underwater. Eli the vampire is conspicuous by absence.

Oskar is in slowed-motion underwater, drowning in dull pool blue. All is quiet. The brother has discovered his capacity for doing the unspeakable. The bully henchmen are slowly being traumatised by their complicity, not really having that same capacity, but in too deep. Oskar is drowning and we are underwater with him, watching. Bubbles float. And…

Wait. What was that noise? Huh? Wait!..? Is that… is that screaming? We are still underwater so all other sounds are muffled. The brother’s hand still grips Oskar’s hair, pushing him under. Then a foot flies past the screen…!! Two feet are flying across the pool, just under the surface of the water, kicking!!

And it was at this point that I said to the screen, out loud and clearly: “Oh my God.”

Because my jaw my dropped, my heart in my throat, my sense of drama, film, story and horror in my throat too. Oh wow. It seemed to me that, rarely, does a film find the totally right way to film a moment, that it was rare to see such a horror scene – a vengeance scene, a slaughtering, the horror money-shot – filmed in such a way.

So: trying to disentangle the sounds that are muffled to work it out. Oskar still floats, half-dead perhaps. Oh, what a perfectly pitched scene: pure cinema, pure horror – all about what you don’t see, triggering the imagination, trusting the audience, focusing on what matters – Oskar’s life! – whilst not skimping on the horror. A decapitated head falls into the pool distance. Jesus. Crunch! The hand holding Oskar down becomes detached and falls away with its disembodied arm. Oskar hasn’t even seen, his eyes closed. It is like he is dreaming all the vengeance, or like he has summoned it. Perhaps he has.

Now a hand reaches in and gently lifts him out. He drifts to the surface.

Above the surface comes Oskar’s head. He opens his eyes and he is looking into those of Eli. He smiles. Yes.

And then: a wide-shot of the pool: in the distance, the headless body draped over the side of the pool: the body of the bully henchman who, really, had he taken time and listened to conscience, could have been a friend to Oskar and saved them all a lot of grief… perhaps. Perhaps he really was that mean and treacherous. Hard to tell. Another of the film’s perfectly maintained ambiguities and mysteries. In the foreground, the ravaged corpses of the chief bully and his brother and, to the side, the other henchman, still sitting where he had sat earlier in terror when realising they were going to drown Oskar, and he is quietly sobbing.

Chills, thrills, drama; horror through sounds and hints but never holding back on the gore either. Such a fine balance. A scene bringing Oskar’s vulnerability to breaking point, never losing sight of him, and in that, never trivialising the albeit mostly off-screen slaughter as merely a shock-piece either.

And when he smiles at Eli, that is it. It is the best and the worst thing ever for him. He is simultaneously found, safe, lost and salvaged by horror. Should you care about such things, it is a cinematic moment transcending genres, one that proves that horror can be rife with both gore and humanity. A film that keeps me rooting for horror as a genre capable of reaching places unlike any other. And one of my favourite scenes.

Notes on why "Let Me In" is not "Let The Right One In"

Notes on why "Let Me In" is not "Let The Right One in"

When I was a boy, I would buy comics, read them and then, with my collection of felt tips, I would colour them in. It didn’t matter if they were black or white: if they were colour pictures, I would simply go over their red with my red, etc. What a hideous act of destruction, I think to myself in retrospect (those comics could have been worth loads now!). But it also appears to me that my act of vandalism was a side effect of coveting the artwork and stories I so enjoyed. With ruinous tools, I attempted to claim them for my own and, yes, perhaps even improve them. It also occurs to me now that this is much like the art of the remake.

There is no getting around comparisons with the original, and that’s why these words are going to be about why “Let Me In” is not “Let The Right One In”. This is only marginally different from damning one with contrast with the other, but I do want to distinguish that this is my agenda from the start. What we have is Thomas Alredson’s “Let The Right One In” being a masterpiece, the superior adaptation of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel, and Matt Reeves’ decent version called “Let Me In” being an American remake of the Swedish film. In fact, the original’s instant classic reputation was/is still warm and spreading when “Let Me In” was made. I shall agree to a large extent with Victoria Large that “'Let Me In’ may be a song that you’ve heard before, but it still sounds great.” If “Let Me In” is a lesser version cashing in, it has only itself to blame, for that is predominantly the domain of the remake and the nature of the beast. Let this be less a straightforward takedown of a remake for not being the original, and more a exploration of why it isn’t. Reeves' film may be a different take on the novel, but it seems likely that it would never have been made if the Swedish film had not become such a cult success. Reeve’s film should not be condemned for any perceived lack of thorough fidelity to the source; making alterations and taking liberties does not automatically flaw an adaptation ~ Alfredson and Lindqvist left out entire chunks in their translation onto screen, after all. In fact, variations and liberties should be encouraged in the hope that they illuminate the original text. It is all about which choices and variations are made: will they illuminate, strengthen or sabotage and weaken?

The title: somehow, the abbreviation, or truncation, of the title is a big clue as to how “Let Me In” compares with its predecessor. “Let The Right One in” - thank you, Morrissey - as a phrase is full of ambiguity, suggestion and scope that “Let Me In”, as a title and film, does not possess. Once the remake was annouced, its pending inferiority was predicted, for the majority of sequels are anticipated to be so, and it does not disappoint on that score. “Let Me in” is certainly not a bad film, being engaging enough and a decent variation on the original tale, carrying a lot of atmosphere and seriousness; but anyone suspecting that a translation to American cinema would neuter much of its resonant detail will have their conjectures confirmed. “Let Me In” does little to dispel a widespread view that any Americanisation (i.e., Hollywoodisation) of a foreign film will simplify if not “dumb down” a more layered and intelligent original. Indeed, there is the infamous case of the terrible subtitling of "Let The Right One In" with the first Ameican DVD release, prime evidence that American translations tend towards "dumbing down" (and you should definitely look here at Fright to see how appallingly a non-English language film can be treated in translation).

And arguably, “Let Me In” does suffer from a neutering, a simplification of all the fascinating and discomforting elements of the Swedish originals, book and film. It is poorer because it is more average, in its adherence to a more traditional genre template, to the very tropes that the originals managed to a large extent to refresh. “Let Me In” is inferior in its persistent obviousness, in making much of the primary mystery explicit, in its more mediocre dialogue and black humour. It is lesser in the obviousness of its vampire make-up, in its recourse to CGI to assist in creating a more inhuman monster (and no, I am not letting “Let The Right One In" cat scene off the hook). Anyone immersed in both the horror and the coming-of-age genre will find things simply more conventional in a way that Alfredson’s film avoided. Reeves’ film is enjoyable, but often uncertain, often copying the Swedish predecessor, ditching the tricky stuff, lacking the challenges and true poignancy of the earlier film. “Let Me In” is more than passable as a remake, but it simply misses so much. Remakes have the difficult goals of both being faithful ~ which usually mean duplicating original material ~ and staking their own identity. One could look to the American remake of “The Ring” to see a remake that actually amplifies and successfully varies the scary tension of the original. Rob Zombie’s “Halloween”, for all its flaws, definitely justifies its alternative take on the original story and commands its own individuality. “Let Me In” simply does not diverge enough, or in an original fashion, and even on its own terms it comes over as too obvious. Everything is sign-posted and tagged. Michael Giacchino cues every response he thinks we ought to be experiencing as if scoring a more needy drama in need of emotional overstatement.

“Let Me In” includes nods to all the major points and characters of the original story ~ many crucial secondary characters are name-checked and pass by (listen for a mention of Tommy, a key character in the novel otherwise absent in both films) ~ but they are all swept away to focus on the young romance. Groan as Owen (previously Oskar) is reading “Romeo and Juliette” for school. But this narrowing down does not cause sharp focus: again simplification occurs. This means that Owen’s dyfunctional family is reduced to brief banal ‘they’re separated’ dialogue and squabbles. When Owen’s mother is propped next to a finished bottle of something ~ alcoholism playing a major part in “Let The Right One In” ~ here it looks like crass shorthand. Whereas “Let The Right One In” comes with a fine catalogue of side characters, the adult support in “Let Me In” mostly evaporate. So a woman goes up in flames (and in keeping with the film’s add more ethos, takes a nurse with her), but it’s simply a set-piece shocker, for we do not know her at all and we don’t care, we’re just suitably horrified. More shorthand: curious and investigative locals are replaced by a single generic Detective - gone is the sense that Oskar’s community has been left to rot, to fend for itself, that there is no protection from or effective law, that any horror can hide there.

In the original, the whole of Oskar’s frozen community seemed sodden with the scourge of alcoholism, an epidemic numbing all human affections, leaving them reeking of despair and dead ends ~ and that being the promise of Oskar’s future. I do not agree with David Jenkins that, in “Let The Right One In”, “eccentric characters are thrown in as story padding” (1): the stir crazy locals are crucial to Oskar’s alienation, his circumstances. In “Let Me In”, this is absent and loneliness and alienation is created by the sense that Owen barely even meets anyone. The backdrop somehow possesses none of the winter-chill eeriness of the original either: rather, the courtyard is bathed in light that is something between bright warm oranges and piss-yellows. This, although apparently caused by the courtyard lighting, seems an odd choice as it robs the story and film of its natural temperature. The one time the film really makes use of Winter is the remarkable image of a corpse in an ice block being pulled out of the lake. Otherwise it’s just footprints in snow.

All this, one can argue, is simply a shift in emphasis for a different market; others may see these details as evidence of “dumbing down”, the occasional uncertainty of tone I earlier accused “Let Me In” of.

More:

When we first meet Oskar in “Let The Right One In”, he is toying with a penknife and, unforgettably, mimicking his tormentors at school ordering him to squeal, little piggy. When we find Owen indulging in this, he is emulating how his persecutors call him a girl. The shift is striking: it evokes homophobia and the denigration of the feminine: they try to verbally castrate him. How very American a translation. Less abstract, primal, and less evocative. This Are you a girl? insult and provocation ends up carrying all the gender confusion that the original novel finds so crucial. (2) In the novel, it is as if Lyndquist wants to push his young loners beyond gender, so that their friendship transcends the problems of gender and social relations. The novel also has a more difficult and distressing portrayal of sexual monsters that could never be fully moved onto the screen. Consequently, for example, Hakan ~ Eli’s adult protector and the most problematic character who, in prose, carries a horror that outdoes Eli’s vampirism ~ is almost entirely devoid of complexity or character in “Let Me In”. All the ickiness has been carefully, surgically removed. Eli is now simply a vampire girl. Hell, Owen even keeps his pyjama top on when Eli comes to seek chaste comfort from him in bed.

If it was not for Chloe Moretz ~ still fully hyped from "Kick Ass" ~ it is easy to imagine that Abby (previously Eli) would also become very vapid by comparison. (3) There is good stuff between her and Kodi Smitt-McPhee as Owen (still hyped from his turn in "The Road") ~ a nice retro-moment in an '80s arcade ~ but as competent as these young actors are, they are left a little stranded with mostly unchallenging dialogue and an unevenness of tone. They don’t feel as iconic and a right as Hadebrant and Leandersson. Their playfulness is lost. They have the loneliness, but not the tangible fury and despair of the original, because “Let Me In” is missing that breadth of context; it is afraid to allow Abby and Owen the full range of what and who they truly are, and the film simply lets them drift through, actors struggling for bearing, plot dragging them towards the conclusion when so much of it should be guided by their characters. When Owen discovers the truth about Abby, it comes as a total shock to him, for beforehand he has not really been shown to have suspicions about his new friend; the element of an impending Faustian pact of sorts that must be made just to gain friendship, that too is vague. Trampled apparently by the romanticism of “Romeo and Juliette”, their relationship has the gore but lacks the chilling revelation that the need for friendship can be a horrifying force.

We are never afraid of Owen, but this is less due to Smitt-McPhee’s abilities than this reduction of the key relationship being put down to simple adolescent loneliness. With Oskar, as played by Kare Hedebrant and his terrible hair in the Swedish adaptation, we felt that his consummate alienation and torment at the hands of others make him a potential psychopath in the making. It is that piggy stuff: he mimics his tormenters so furiously and bitterly. When he hits his bully across the head with a branch, we might feel he has crossed a dangerous line, but one that was always a part of him. He got a kick from it and we feel he wants more. Oskar relishes. He is, we feel, reaching his full potential. When Owen does it, it is simply self-defence: no real moral complexities are evident; his soul is barely at stake. Even providing Owen with a little “Rear Window” voyeurism early on doesn’t ultimately trouble his character. It is worth quoting Matt Reeves himself (still respected from Cloverfield) to demostrate that he gets so much of what Oskar is about, and yet cannot carry this over so very clearly and starkly in Owen, who is a far more pacif, rudderless character:

"...there's something very interesting about a 12 year old boy growing up in a world where he's bullied so mercilessly that he deserves revenge but he does not know what to do about it. He's so helpless, and how could he not be? He's only human. He has those feelings. And yet the world around him is telling him those are evil thoughts and that they mean he is evil.Because there's none of that within us, we are fundamentally good. And wouldn't he not understand any of that and feel lost?" (4)

This sounds interesting, a summary of a fully formed character and context. But this is not particularly the character of Owen that we meet. We do not really see him being told that his thoughts of revenge are evil. Keeping this quote in mind, when Owen calls his father and asks if he believes in evil (neatly, the father is so self-obsesses he thinks this is just Owen's mother poisoning the boy against him), perhaps we are meant to sense Owen's confusion about his own desire for violent revenge, although it is all so vague that we might feel he is simply referring to Abby, who he has discovered to be inhuman. This reference to "evil" also seems paricularly American, as if American horror can only see monsters and violence in terms of an abstract, religious context, which the original sources are very particular about side-stepping. But Owen's reference to "evil" is a non-starter and barely contributes to what comes after.

What Reeves does offer that is new is something not found in either the novel or the Swedish adaptation: in place of an eerie, distressing locker room scene, a botched murder attempt, we get an action set-piece: it is a fairly breath-taking and scary car crash as viewed from within the vehicle, and it is probably the only truly original and virtuoso set-piece “Let Me In” has. The other set-pieces mostly copy, paste and add more gore. In his “Little White Lies” review, Adam Woodward waxes that “Let Me In” is “bloody and unabashed”; that the “eerie quietude so deftly composed by its predecessor is here ousted by bloodcurdling screams and eye-watering violence” (5). Perhaps I am jaded from too many modern European and Asian ‘extreme’ horrors, but I cannot say I saw much of the bloodcurdling, the screaming and eye-watering violence, or no more than the average modern horror. Nevertheless, “Let Me In” is probably bloodier than "Let The Right One In". By the time we get to the pool scene, wondering if perhaps this version will be able to pull out a different angle, what we get instead are a thick wodge of horror orchestra and simply more limbs and blood in the pool, and therefore none of the sheer originality of Alfredson’s careful use of sound, angle and hints. So of course it would be possibly impossible to out-do the original pool scene ~ a total, horror classic ~ but to simply trace over the original and add more bloodiness… was that even trying? Sometimes more blood simply seems desperate. And here, again, Reeves misses the tiny details that mean everything: the apparent and increasing confusion of cruelty and conscience of the main bully’s henchmen; the way Eli leaves just one alive, traumatised. And then, in closing somehow, someway, the brilliant openness and ambiguity of the original ending feels narrowed, somehow explained and less troubling (and Hakan’s birthmark is another groan-worthy cue that undoes much of the mystery once it appears in some old photos Owen sees). It has less resonance because the rest is a more confirming, more straightforward telling of a modern classic. And then the strings swell.

It has to be said that Giacchino’s score is a terrible offender. It cues in every emotion, every horror as if worried we just aren’t getting the undercurrents. And in that score, as well as the abbreviated title, we find everything that “Let The Right One In” was not.

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It must be noted that "Let Me In" is the first film from the revived Hammer Studio Brand. Not a bad start, even if it seems a safe bet to cash in on a previous established title. Hammer was, after all, a certain kind of exploitation. Welcome back then. Better than Amicus' return with "It's Alive".

(1) David Jenkins review for “Let The Right One In”, Time Out Film Guide 2011, (ed. John Pym, Time Out Guides Ltd, London, 2010) pg. 609

(2) One friend called this version of the knifing-the-tree scene embarrassing, badly acted and executed.

(3) Another friend feels that Moretz is badly cast and that this scuppers the whole film.

(4) Matt Reeves interview by Jonathan Crocker, Little White Lies Magazine, issue 32 nov/dec. pg. 76

(5) Adam Woodward, "Let Me In" review, Little White Lies Magazine, issue 32 nov/dec 2010, pg.77

A Swedish Love Story

A SWEDISH LOVE STORY / EN KARLEKSHISTORIA
Roy Andersson, 1970, Sweden

What is distinguished about Roy Andersson’s portrayal of adolescent love is the respect, the unwavering reverence with which he treats the romance of his young protagonists. We may be amused at their affectation of supposed adult ‘cool’, with their leather jackets and mopeds and miniskirts and attention to make-up and posing, but these are also the core of their evolving characters. There is no denying the confidence with which they carry themselves. It is impossible not to recognise ourselves in them: furtive looks, raw feelings, tenderness. When Par (Rolf Sohlman) receives Annika (Anne-Sofie Kylin) at his family’s country home, he can barely stop smiling to be around her. These are agreeable protagonists, not immediately approachable or conventionally affable, for we will never be allowed access to their full inner-workings; but they are fully rounded characters.

Andersson’s debut wears very little friction between the loose influence of Czech New Wave naturalism and the clearer, infamous stylistic formalism of his later films (""Something Happened", "Songs From The Second Floor", "You, The Living"), although the opening does inform us that this is theatre with the rise of a curtain. Andersson’s obsession with detail serves his young couple well, not only in their dress sense and mannerisms, but also their less guarded mannerisms and casual body-language (e.g., the random way Par clucks his tongue nonchalantly after having been caught romancing in Annika‘s bedroom). It also generates a wholly convincing milieu for them to live in and explore: from nursing homes, clubs and the streets, to Annika’s bedroom and the country retreat. Rarely do films feel so of a time and place without feeling dated.

Andersson’s respect for his protagonists is served further by technique: after a split between the couple due to Par’s humiliation and near unbearable shame at being beaten by another boy, the break-up is resolved in a glorious scene where Par mopeds across the yard back into Annika’s arms. The scene uses a melancholic swell of music, strings that manage not to turn the evident melodrama of the moment trite, but rather serious, heroic and moving. The moment creates a dry humour in evoking those big scenes of reconciliation that resolve so many romantic narratives: he is James Dean, Elvis, whoever, awkwardly jumping off of the moped to rush back to her. But more than this, when they are reconciling, the music swells to drown out their spoken intimacies and the camera steps back from close-up to wide-shot to allow them their privacy. It is a moment of sublime cinematic generosity and regard for the characters.

But once they are at the country home, Andersson retreats from the couple completely and we are left with the adults. Throughout, we have been shown the adults as a counterpoint to the young romantics, apparently to reveal what a loveless adulthood becomes, to show what the teenagers are not, or even what they might become. No, we don’t really believe they will become their parents, but the possibility remains. The adults are tediously angst-ridden and distraught, melodramatic and childish in a way Par and Annika are not. Annika’s parents are trapped in an apparently loveless marriage where the mother sobs and the father is given to pompous declarations of bitterness. With Par’s parents being more settled (regardless of their concerns about ill grandparents and business in a time of economic strife), the dramatic focus falls on Annika’s parents, in particular her father’s self-loathing and boorishness. He is driven to distraction by a sense of failure, his temper and a desire to see his indifferent daughter deliver vengeance on the world on his behalf. This focus seeks to trump the Swedish love story who are conspicuous in their absence - Par and Annika have snuck away to be intimate - and the adult histrionics are crass and far less involving than the delicacies of the teenagers. Earlier, a scene involving installing a pair of swing doors in the house is almost farcical in the way the family turn it into a confrontation of the value of the action and the meaning of life. But later, there is little of the satirical, mocking qualities to the last act, as typical of Andersson’s subsequent films; yet the party hats and bibs provide some welcome surrealism, although this too is slightly at odds with the preceding naturalism. Ultimately, there is the feeling that a wrong-turn has been taken, as if the narrative has wandered into another Bergman-influenced film of broken angst-ridden families, leaving the love story somewhat stranded and an aftertaste of dissatisfaction. Like Par and Annika, we really had little to learn from the adults.

Nevertheless, this remains a towering, beautifully made tribute to first love, to the main protagonists and the range of feeling and intelligence held by youth. A rare film that sees its main characters not so much as puppets and ciphers ruled by narrative, but as the personification of the raw, rare and vital intimacies of adolescent discovery and character; and in that way, and more than that, as people in their own right.

DAYBREAK

Om jag vänder mig om

Björn Runge - 2003 - Sweden

Swedish melodrama by Bjorn Runge based around three couples and a night of secrets, shouting, sharing, absolution, etc. You know the score. Comparisons with Bergman’s family dramas are obvious, but the roaming camera pursuing and swinging between characters looking for cracks and blame seem more akin to Haneke. If anything, despite a quality cast, Runge’s allowing everything to be resolved by histrionics only shows how carefully calibrated Bergman pitched his melodrama. Despite its chilly, despondent disposition, "Daybreak" has more in common with soap operas.

Also like Hanake, Runge ultimately comes out as hectoring and exhibiting moral superiority. There is evidence of casual humanity, but in the end the blame is - as in Hanake - with a middle-class bourgeois who Won’t Face Things and earnestly live their lives in denial. The oddness here is that Runge throws culpability mostly all on the men. A builder who works so hard to earn money for his family, he never spends time with them. A man so embedded in his own loss of his daughter and disgust at the outside world, especially people of colour, that he wants the house bricked up so no one can trouble him and his wife. A philandering doctor about to lose his job and family who, when confronted with painful truths over a dinner of revelations, simply keeps saying he is going to make dinner or coffee to comical proportions. And, oddest of all, a man who left his clearly disturbed and demanding wife for a younger woman years ago. He is obviously happy with his new life, and his ex-wife clearly needs psychiatric treatment and a restraining order; and yet perversely we are apparently to empathise with her agony, with her inflicting what can only be termed torture upon her ex and his wife, for this is the only way he can be made to face the grief he has caused so that she can achieve closure. The ex-wife is left to wander into the dawn, presumably cleansed and less sociopathic, but I wouldn’t bet on it. It’s a fine line between addressing the flaws of average people for a humane outlook and criticising those mistakes into something more judgmental.

The overt symbolism is occasionally cloying too. The bricking-up-the-house is a decent conceit, for it generates a little quirk and mystery besides representing willful alienation. But we start with the graphic removal of the heart; a car chase that ends with them going in circles; a moment where the different narratives briefly pass one another at a crossroads; and then, when revelations have been made and absorbed… daybreak. Like firearms, hysterical characters are often cheap dramatics in search of meaningful drama. More reliance upon the fine cast and greater restraint might have given the show more elegance.

Persona

Ingmar Bergman, 1966

What you hardly read about Bergman is that he is often scary. If you are looking for a precursor to David Lynch's creepiness and surrealism, turn to the opening nightmare sequence of "Wild Strawberries"; or to the hanging woodsman in "Summer’s Children" for a genuine ghost story chill; or death walking the lounge in "Fanny and Alexander"; or the all-round eeriness of "Hour of the Wolf", amongst others. And this is before we have even encountered his essays in psychological breakdown. For someone who isn’t known as a horror writer, Bergman was very assured and casual with the genre’s motifs. "Persona", for example, not only has psychological breakdown and seemingly a personality-transference between an actress and her nurse, but also plays with a wealth of vampire imagery.Or, perhaps, we are dealing in split personality, which we must puzzle out and which is another horror staple. Bergman happily has his characters and dramas interacting with seemingly supernatural elements that may or may not be genuine. I have always loved this because you never know when he is going to spring these moments upon you, and when you are not watching as a horror audience, your guard is often down and the effect is often genuinely surprising and chilling.

"Persona" is a famously unsolvable mystery, and if the opening montage of images are clues, they don’t really help with answers: film stock reeling and burning up; an erect penis (originally censored, naturally); bodies in a morgue; a boy asleep like a corpse in a white empty room. He wakes… is he the actress’ son, dreaming of her, or is she dreaming of him? Or is he a manifestation of the nurse’s aborted child? We can wonder this later or after, when we know some stories concerning our main characters: an actress who refuses to speak or function, apparently in an artistic and existential collapse; and the nurse assigned to oversee her recuperation in a beach house. But it is the nurse who uses the actress’s silence for experiments in unburdening herself in a quintessential Bergman confession of an adulterous dalliance. When the nurse feels her confidence has been condescended and betrayed, a confusion of the women’s characters threatens meltdown. What is real and what is fantastic is not clear: does the actress’s husband really turn up to the beach house and mistake the nurse for his wife? Some kind of emotional vampirism is occurring here, and the actress pours out of fog to seduce her victim. There is also some sucking of blood, completely Nosferatu. Cinematic conventions being played with, where the screen burns up as if the projector is on fire from the drama, but somehow this is more akin to an emotional variation of the formal shock moment from a horror film (rather than, say, the kind of conceited self-reflexive trick of the fast-forward moment of Haneke’s "Funny Games").

It is open to readings of criticism of psychotherapy, and it also acts nicely as a tale of the unreal affinity and emotional demands audiences make of artists: the nurse (Bibi Andersson) may just as well be telling her secrets to a poster of Liv Ullman. But for all this stark, pretty imagery and genre bending, Bergman knows that the real horrors can be existential states of despair and fear, that non-communication, disloyalty and superciliousness can force wide open cracks in vulnerable people. Fascinating, frustrating and compelling, very few can force such ideas to work and transcend. Bergman had a vast output and range, and even now he never fails to surprise and, frequently, to chill.