Simply Perfect

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Better translated as "Summerplay" or "Summer Games," Bergman's 1951 offering is considered the iconic Swedish director's first "mature" work. Bergman also was quoted on more than one occasion that this particular film was the first in which his "independent" voice was heard.Like Summer with Monika, which appeared two years later, Summer Interlude focuses on the relationship between a young couple spending their summer in the Stockholm archipelago. Despite a dark plot twist, Summer Interlude ends up on an optimistic note, in contrast to "Monika," which highlights the pessimism of a relationship gone sour.Bergman's protagonist is Marie (Maj-Britt Nillson), an emotionally cut- off, 28 year old ballet dancer, about to perform in a final dress rehearsal of Swan Lake. Marie's "ordinary world" is the backstage at the theater where she works. Although it takes a while to get to the "inciting incident" where the story gets going, we're content to observe all the backstage machinations, as Bergman's true-life experience in the theater is proffered in high relief.While the dress rehearsal is delayed due to a technical glitch, Marie receives a package containing the long-lost diary of her college-aged lover, Henrik, whom she had an intense relationship when she was 15 years old; this propels her to take a ferryboat to the archipelago where the two young lovers began an ill-fated relationship marred by a horrible tragedy.We flashback to those halcyon days of youth with Nillson transforming herself into a carefree, fledgling ballet student. She's staying with two friends of her deceased mother, whom she refers to as her Aunt Elisabeth and Uncle Erland. The "Uncle" proves to be a lascivious character, making it clear that he has designs on the teenager, despite the complete inappropriateness of the situation. Marie innocently dismisses Erland's behavior and nothing comes of it until much later.The bulk of the story concerns Marie's relationship with Henrik. Bergman's portrait of Marie, a mercurial waif of sorts but also completely devoted to her ballet craft, is the best part of the film. One of the highlights of their interaction is a completely original comic animated depiction of the relationship that appears on a record label of all places! Henrik is less developed as a multi-dimensional character—he's a brooding fellow who is perhaps on the verge of overcoming his fears about getting out into the world. That's all cut short when Henrik is killed when he mistakenly dives over a cliff into shallow water.Marie is so devastated that she blurts out that she doesn't believe God exists and will hate him until the day she dies. Flash forward to the present and Marie meets up with Uncle Erland who admits that it was he who sent her Henrik's diary. It was Erland who urged her to cut herself off from her emotions at the time of the accident (wouldn't Erland have been a bit more subtle in his exhortations for Marie to bottle herself up as he was engaging in the not so subtle act of seducing her?). Nonetheless, in the present, Marie now makes it clear that she despises Erland for how he took advantage of her.Summer Interlude ends with an uncharacteristic "happy ending." The woman who cursed God thirteen years earlier and endures the ballet master's cogent analysis of her current situation of emotional paralysis, suddenly does a 180 degree, allows her current boyfriend David to read Henrik's diary and then the next day kisses him, before throwing herself optimistically into to the now live performance of Swan Lake.The abrupt transition between the wounded teenager turned adult and optimistic professional dancer, doesn't quite ring true. Nonetheless, all the hints of Bergman's masterpieces soon to come, are there in Summer Interlude; especially the masterful cinematography of Gunnar Fischer, one of Bergman's long-time collaborators. Summer Interlude is worth watching in its own right as there are still many elements indicative of a true master film director at work.

Another B/w Bergman film from the 1950′s. Most of them seem indistinguishable from one another. But if this is anything like "Summer with Monika" I'm in for a treat.Ballet and ballerinaing is not a good subject for me. Hope this doesn't stay too long stuck up a tutu.The boy interest is Henrik. She – minxy Marie – is offering to show him wild strawberries. "I'm never going to die" she says. "I wish i could burst into bits, vanish, become nothing" she's gushing to the lovelorn lad.Its got similarities to Summer with Monika; young love and first kisses; sleeping together in a lakeside cabin (possibly first fcuking too?) boating about archipelagos abundant with bird songs, skimming stones, canoeing by moonlight, sharing those wild strawberries:"Days like pearls, round, iridescent, on a thread of gold. Days full of play and caresses, nights of wide-awake dreams" she wistfully reflects later on. Happy days. But will it all go sour for Marie like it did for Monika? Well, Henrik is afraid he's"going to slip over the side into something dark and unknown" And a shadow just passed over the sun. And an owl is hooting. This doesn't bode well. Happy days are numbered for Marie and Henrik. Prepare for the worst all you young lovers.And here it is: Henrik dives off a rock, breaks his head. Goes comatose. Won't be recovering.The last 20 minutes is shadowed by this tragedy. Young lovings bloom withered so soon. A catcher of fleeting moments Marie was meant to be; but her moments to come won't be iridescent pearls on threads of gold; Marie's days are gonna get long and hard, and be old already."I don't believe God exists" she snarls. "I'll hate him until i die". She wants to spit in Gods face.Old Uncle Erland – the Lech – is there to console her: "Protect yourself. Wall yourself in. I'll help you. I'll show you how to build a wall" he says. What terrible life denying advice that is! But, unfortunately, she's listened to him. Has walled herself in. Erected a wall around her heart for 13 years. Eventually forgets Henrik.A final scene has her sitting in her ballerina dressing room wiping off her painted face and facing up "really" to the reality of being who she is: a resigned old woman of 28. But this realisation transforms rapidly – all too easily – into a sense of renewal. (I'm not getting that at all) Still, it's been a lovely film. Not quite as good as Summer with Monika – but still good enough.

Ingmar Bergman unfolds his 1951 drama, Summer Interlude, under a bleak canopy of the downhearted and disenchanted, an umbrella of gathering doom and gloom as both the summer skies and its respective weather gently gives way to the harsher and colder characteristics of autumn; as the rural locale in which the film is predominantly set becomes barer, less lush and more frightening as things gradually wind down for a longer, greyer haul. The said items greatly compliment a really stark, professionally observed and thoroughly engaging mediation on life and attitudes of old twinned with doomed romance whilst one was younger; a brilliantly played and fascinating in equal right observation of great intimacy on attitudes to life and those around one when one is younger simultaneously exploring that yearning for times gone by. From its frank opening act culminating in a woman deciding to journey out so as to confront both fears and the pain because of something which still resonates, to its closing of the lead peeling certain things away from her as she additionally quite literally reflects into a mirror following a somewhat successful journey, it is a devilishly involving romantic-drama which works brilliantly.The film covers young Marie (Nilsson), a Swedish ballerina whose mind and whose memories make up the bulk of the film's runtime as she ventures out to a more rural part of her country, but only when the hard graft of bringing to life an incarnation of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake is temporarily halted. Her decision to do so is inspired by a collection of things she receives in the post, her facial reaction occupying most of the frame as a diegetic alarm bell within the theatre she's working sounds off and acts as a fitting soundtrack overlying the imagery. Once back on the floor following the role-call bell and practising again, the film presents us with what appears to be two or three different soundtracks of internal and external music playing over the images, as these rather dramatic dance procedures are presented to us in a relatively close up format whilst the impact of what was read or discovered barely a scene ago resonates. Post practise, a session brought to a premature end following some technical malfunction with required stage equipment, Marie leaves the building with her journalist boyfriend David (Kjellin).We discover that she has had little time for him recently, the manner in which the production crew drive Marie fresh in our minds; Marie taking this opportunity to bury the proverbial hatchet by temporarily ditching David, as well as everything and everyone else, by leaving the mainland and heading on out to a more secluded rural spot featuring lakes; lake-houses; woods and isolated manor houses. Once there, at this somewhat desolate; cold; murky and rather frightening place, the film will cover events from thirteen years ago when she was barely out of her teenaged years and a love affair-come-friendship with young boy Henrik (Malmsten) doubling up as her first love. The harking back begins with the travelling by boat, each item acting as its own landmark upon which Marie's memory acts on particular cues, and Henrik's admitting to feeling for her through performance or third party spectatorship; specifically, that he has watched her perform many times as a ballerina and has felt how he does through these observations before having even met her.Once at the island during her flashback, the warm weather and summer surroundings make for perfect conditions as she visits an aunt and uncle that live there; the occupying of a small beach house all by herself and prospect of lake swimming and time off greatly alluring. The weather compliments the deliberately romanticised nature of her memories, her attitude to most of those around her flirtatious and adventurous to say the least; her more recent opinions on these things, we come to feel, nothing but regretful. Her bond with Henrik is highly charged in a sexual manner without there ever being much in the way of embrace; a series of energetic altercations and interactions, in what we assume to be the relatively searing heat, seeing the pair of them wear little for most of the time as sessions of swimming in the nearby lake goes hand in hand with the erotic crawling around on all-fours in front of each other on the shore constructing mere games, while, on occasion, Henrik's own glee at eating wild fruit out of Marie's hands is additional content. Inbetween all of this sees the prancing and gallivanting around inspired by Marie's own occupation as a dancer, the very item that is the reason Henrik feels as he does, occurring.Where in the past Marie slept in her bathing costume and woke up with a warm, glowing smile on her face as she leaped out of bed to tear open the curtains and then charge into the water to swim, times change. Where once she was happy as could be and couldn't wait to get started in the mornings during this holiday away, solemn and rueful looks around the locale that has remained the same occupy her lone, statue-like figure as she hurtfully reminisces to herself. The film is a painful mediation, but an honest and enthralling enough study of a young woman eventually coming to accept what has happened and, we feel, come to embrace what it is she currently has in her life. In every regard, it is a superior piece of doomed romance captured elegantly on film.

How simple it must have been back in 1951 to take or leave this film as what it said on the tin, a bittersweet doomed love leaving the survivor full of old regrets, rather than ignoring the story and looking for clues - the chess game with one of the players terminally ill, the wild strawberries, add-your-own referentials - to the famous filmmaker he became rather than the fledgling -this was his tenth film as director - he was here. Long before film came on the scene Literature was cutting its teeth on doomed love and throwing up the odd classic along the way. In film terms we think of Mayerling, Brief Encounter, Ripening Seed, Le Ble en herbe, Le Diable au corps etc, only one of which (Ripening Seed) features teenage love though all are shot through with angst on a spectrum ranging from melancholy to tragedy. Bergman's if fit to be mentioned in the same sentence as those cited whilst being superior to none of them.