L'adultera

This underrated Ingmar Bergman film is a disappointment to some and a puzzle to others. But if the viewer looks past the mundane story line, a middle class marriage threatened by a moody, violent stranger, one can see just how much richness Bergman has invested into this otherwise predictable type of story. I found Karin, the modern heroine in this story, to be a perfect symbol of the flip-side of Bergman's fascinating female protagonists.

The harsh criticism that Elliott Gould received for having accepted this role was unjustified and grossly exaggerated. Taking on a role like this is a thankless task at best and his interpretation of the despicable David was misunderstood. I think it was an authentic and courageous performance, an example of an actor who decides to portray the character straight without looking to advertise his own star persona.

Confronted by a type like David, we can understand how Karin could succumb to his advances and not even see where she's heading in this self-destructive relationship. We see stranger stuff than this in real life, why not accept it being put to an audience by the greatest film director who ever lived?

I guess the ones who are most apt to truly understand the depth of this movie are those who live a situation similar as Anderson's character - a housewife, dutiful to her husband and children, living a normal, stable, yet boring life. Then bursts into her life a charming, attractive, mysterious and intriguing man. Elliott Gould gives an amazing performance - different from the usual type of character he portrays, still perfect and natural. Thinking back at the movie, I cannot imagine any other actor doing playing the role the way he does. The movie is simply wonderful.

It's the story of a married woman falling in love with another man. The married couple - Max von Sydow and Bibi Andersson - does live in fine rapport, their personalities matching well. Both are quiet, contemplative, and very rational persons, not liable to act spontaneous. The intruder - Elliott Gould - on the idyll which they embody together with their teenaged daughter is in contrast an impetuous man, uncompromising, overbearing, and tormented by inner contradictions and compulsions. Andersson tells him at one point that he hates himself. The two clandestine lovers aren't appropriate for each other. They have difficulties to accept the other's social behaviour and stance and don't like it to lie to their environments. But soon they cannot live without each other anymore.

The point of the film cannot be to show how two contrary characters complement each other, as Andersson was even more happy with von Sydow before and because it's all told in such a detached manner. The portrait of a love would like to involve the spectators to convey the joy and pain of it. Instead the question why Andersson turns away from von Sydow toward Gould seems intentionally perplexing. The dialogues and acting of the lovers is cerebral and cold, as if they were reciting dazedly on a stage, astounding themselves with their actions and feelings. As if they were actuating on an impulse isolate from their personalities. This impulse or drive is not eros, as especially at the beginning of their affaire sex is more a problem than a fulfilment to these two diffident lovers. Maybe love or the need to feel and give love is itself such a drive, an autonomous thing asserting itself regardless of the circumstances and the characters involved.

The central metaphor of the film is a medieval wooden statue of Mary, recently excavated after being buried for centuries - like Gould's and Andersson's potential to be lovers or man and woman. But with the disinterment of the Mary there also come alive insect larvae inside her, corroding her from within. Before they meet Gould attempted suicide and Andersson was reduced to a wife. They flower in their new love and it destroys their lives.

Civilization means in many ways the domestication of our impulses. Therefore Andersson realizes that she must not harm lastingly her family and Gould's hidden wife/sister. This is true. But Gould is telling her that she is lying to herself by not eloping with him and he's right, too.

Separate cultural worlds entwine and collide, as David and Karin collude and backslide, betraying a friend, the other a partner, to gorge on themselves as their passions are transferred, not sure what will come of their clasps and embrace, with eyes that adore though there's often no grace, two lost lonely souls, with nowhere to go, marooned in their worlds by the seeds they have sowed.

It's not the most engaging piece of cinema from the maestro, Bibi Andersson is as gorgeous as ever and presents Karin in a way only she could. As for Elliot Gould, I'm not sure he really fills the role, cultural European Arthouse cinema is not what I would ever associate him with, and it shows, especially if you compare him to the legacy of legends that have preceded him.

I've heard a lot of things about this film -- it generally gets low reviews, is described as "unBergmanesque", and the fact that its so difficult to find led me have very low expectations for the film. I expected something between the atypical Bergman plot of "The Serpent's Egg" and the disturbing social violence of "From the Life of the Marionettes." I finally tracked down a copy, poor in quality, and expected mediocrity at best when I put it in.

After having just finished watching it, I can say I was very pleasantly surprised with the film. A lot of the things said about it are just plain false -- the plot is very much in keeping with Bergman's other material. A married woman, Karin (Anderson), falls in love with a disturbed architect, David (Gould), and the two begin an emotionally confused love affair. Karin is caught between her happy bourgeois life with her husband (Sydow) and children, and her passionate, unconventional relationship with David. Acting in bad faith, Karen refuses to choose between her two lives, though both David and her husband eventually push the decision on her. Like most Bergman films, its a psychological roller coaster and a bleak portrayal of the coarseness of human relationships.

Bibi Anderson does a wonderful job in a very difficult role, and Max von Sydow plays the part of the honest and good intentioned husband very well, playing hard on the viewer's sympathies. The stiff performance of Gould echoes that of Carradine in "The Serpent's Egg," so it must unfortunately be attributed to Bergman's struggle with directing in English, not on Gould himself. If I recall, the film was made in both Swedish and English, both versions filmed at once, which poses obvious production difficulties which might account from the some times mechanical treatment of the script.

The film has an excellent pace to it, and moves very swiftly and smoothly, wonderfully shot by Nykvist in a way very similar to "The Passion of Anna." Unlike a lot of Bergman's depressing work in the 1970s, I felt good about the film when it was over.

I don't know why this film has such a poor reputation -- I'm very much baffled after having seen it. My guess is the obvious mistake of having made it in English accounts for most of this.

Its seems a lot like Bergman's other work in this period. Very Good.