Faithless Details

disappointing film

I expected much more from a film scripted by Bergman and directed by Liv Ullman, who is pretty fabulous as an actress in his films. Unfortunately the story here is rather uninspiring and the acting quite indulgent. If you're interested in their work see 'Cries and Whispers' or any other Bergman classic instead, a much more rewarding experience.

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A cautionary tale

This re-telling of an intense affair and its catastrophic aftermath is soul-searching, sensitive and painful. The narrator, with the help of ghosts of long-since disappeared participants - in particular the erstwhile lover, played excellently by Lena Endre - pieces together the details of the adultery as it unfolded, and the way it reverberates in the world of the woman who put her family on the line in exchange for love. While the story of a love triangle follows the classic pattern things go remarkably wrong, making it a most pessimistic and cautionary tale. The contrast between the peaceful, quiet, protective settings and the emotional storm that rages in the narrator's memory and the lives of the protagonists makes for an obvious moral: passion flees, damage is inevitable, guilt remains.