“A mother and a daughter. What a terrible combination of feelings and confusion and destruction.”
So says daughter Eva (Liv Ullmann) during a brutal overnight argument with her mother Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman, in her final film) in this superbly acted 1978 film from Ingmar Bergman. The premise is simple: Eva hears that her mother has lost her companion of many years, and invites her to come stay with her and her minister husband. She hasn’t seen her mother in seven years, and as we slowly learn, this isn’t unusual. Charlotte was/is a concert pianist, absent and unloving to her daughters. Yes, there is a second daughter, Helena, cared for by Eva. Helena is severely mentally and physically disabled, and her very existence clearly horrifies Charlotte.
So that’s the situation. And it peaks in one night, as Charlotte and Eva share a bottle of wine to cure their insomnia. So begins the tour de force smackdown. Ullmann is brilliant as she portrays all of Eva’s repressed anger and jealously and love/hate, letting it slowly simmer up and over and explode out of her in spurts. From the moment Charlotte arrives, she commands attention; even the camera zooms in tight and quick on her as she enters a room, as if no one else is important enough to show. The great Ingrid Bergman holds her own (she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar), teetering between denial and guilt, horror and shame. All the while, the disabled sister Helena (Lena Nyman, in a devastatingly real performance), awoken from a nightmare, crawls along the floor, shouting for her mother’s aid, ignored.
It’s a very theatrical piece (incidentally, Yale Rep did a stage version of Bergman’s script just last April): one dynamic confrontation, the symbolism of Helena’s physical affliction. But Bergman fills it with quiet flashbacks, a great palette of oranges and browns (alluding to the dying world of autumn). Above all, it’s simply amazing to watch Bergman and Ullmann tear into each other for an hour. Surely some of the best acting I’ve seen.
ALSO: It still astounds me how much Isabella Rossellini looks/sounds like Ingrid Bergman, her mother. Like an exact mirror image. Amazing.
