Les filles

I had high hopes for this, featuring a trio of Bergman's greatest actresses (Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson, Gunnel Lindblom) in the leads and a pair of his greatest actors (Gunnar Bjornstrand, Erland Josephson) in supporting roles. Unfortunately, Mai Zetterling (whose LOVING COUPLES I somewhat enjoyed) goes way over-the-top with the experimental flourishes. The story involves a production of Aristophanes' classic sex satire "Lysistrata", with the play, reality, and fantasy bleeding into each other in a series of obvious juxtapositions, half-baked metaphors and heavy-handed social commentary. Subtlety is not to be found here, and the film's divebomb approach to the battle of the sexes is often grating and tedious. These actors are usually a joy to watch, and they give it their all, but they just can't overcome the material, which comes off as another naive product of 60's progressiveness. The heart's in the right place, but the execution is too irritating. Nice photography and a strong cast aren't enough.

'Flickorna' (the English title is 'The Girls'), made in 1968, was probably the most ambitious film in the directorial career of Mai Zetterling, a personality of Swedish cinema that I discovered while watching this film. Mai launched herself as an actress and had quite a bit of success in Sweden as well as in England and the United States, but when she was approaching the age of 40 she decided to abandon acting and go behind the camera as a director. She would return to acting towards the end of her life to confront Anjelica Houston in 'The Witches'. 'Flickorna' was her third film, a very interesting but also very controversial production, both for its unusual format and for its declared political, pacifist and feminist content. We can say that it is a manifesto expressed through refined artistic means. The reception was mixed, the audience and some critics turned their backs on the film, and Mai Zetterling did not direct anything for almost ten years. I liked the film, especially because it seems to me to have become terribly topical again.

The main heroines of the film are three actresses who go on tour in remote regions of Sweden with a performance of Aristophanes' 'Lysistrata'. They are three mature women, each facing their own problems in their personal lives. Liz's marriage is on the verge of falling apart because of her husband, who already has a mistress and is looking for ways to get out of the relationship. Marianne is a single mother who is forced to take her baby to rehearsals and on tour, entrusting him to the care of babysitters. Gunilla already has four children, whom she leaves during the tour in the care of her husband, who is not too happy about the situation. Their experiences intertwine with the feminist and pacifist text and message of the classic comedy, which is used to convey women's feelings, but also their ideology. But is this form of engaged theater relevant and effective? Liz's attempt to engage the audience in a discussion about the meaning of the play after the performance is a failure.

The film is made in 1968, a turning point and perhaps the most revolutionary year of the Cold War - the year of the student uprisings in Paris, the protests against the Vietnam War in the USA and the Prague Spring and its crushing by the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet tanks. Mai Zetterling was part of Ingmar Bergman's circle of collaborators and friends, but her art is much more explicitly committed to feminist and pacifist ideologies. The three actresses who play the main roles - Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson and Gunnel Lindblom - were also among Bergman's collaborators in theatre and film. I really liked the way personal problems are combined with political messages, the theatre in the film alternating the lines on stage with sequences from the lives of the protagonists. Aristophanes' text remains relevant to this day and will continue to resonate with viewers as long as women's equality in rights and opportunities is not fully achieved and as long as wars continue to be decided and fought by men. The questions that 'Flickorna' asks about the place of women in society, about the power of art and the influence of culture in politics and about peace as an alternative to the endless chain of wars and violence are brought to the screen in an elegant manner and seem painfully relevant today more than ever.

Harriet Andersson, Bibi Andersson, and Gunnel Lindblom go on tour with LYSISTRATA and become radicalized into political agency by the play and the reactions -- or lack of reactions -- to it.

Mai Zetterling's film disappeared from the theaters after three weeks of awful receipts. The critics -- men, of course -- didn't care for this tale of how these women's real lives bonded with their stage lives to create a third life, part dream, part hallucination, with the men reduced to indistinguishable, impotent actors driven simply by their lusts for sex and dull normality.

The movie has gained respect over the years, with feminists acclaiming it. But were the critics of the time so wrong? Aristophanes' play has often often attracted the attention of modern writers and producers. They've made modern-dress novels, and plays and movies, and they seem to have a uniformly poor reception. Perhaps the attraction of the source material to Ms Zetterling was it was one of the few works of classic literature in which women had agency. Whereas Aristophanes intended this as mockery of the new, more democratic spirit of Athens that he so despised, offering peace as so obvious that even women could see it, and men being such brutes that they'd do anything for sexual release. He was not making an argument for extending the franchise to women; he wanted a return to the Good Old Days, when aristocrats with names like Aristophanes were in charge.

Perhaps the failing here is Ms Zetterling's honesty. Like Spike Jones, in his gloss on the play, CHI-RAQ, she points out the hypocrisy of the class she argues for, their cowardice in refusing to accept responsibility. That's one of the risks of satire. Once you've offended everyone, there aren't going to be many fans.

I believe this movie represents how it felt to be an out-spoken feminist in the 60s. The people you were preaching to weren't listening, the people you were preaching against were laughing of you. It must have been a terrible struggle, and this movie portrays this in an interesting manner.

However, while feminism movement is still going strong (and rightfully so), this movie does not hold up as that relevant any more. The feminist struggle was different back then than now, and while some of the problems are the same, the "war" (as they call it in the film) is different, making this movie feel as dated as it is.

The highlights of the movie are some of the surreal scenes. I believe this is the only movie with a chase scene where a snowmobile is chasing a kicksled.

So, I would say watch this if you are interested in either feminism in cinema, or the situation of the feminists in the 60s and 70s. Or if you are interested in (swedish) film history, as this release caused some controversy. But if you are a casual moviegoer that (amazingly) stumbles upon this, you probably will not be too happy.

This is an amazing underrated movie. It' funny, intelligent and deals critically with gender issues and with the difficulty in reaching out to people and producing change. Of course, if you're really sexist this film is not for you, you surely won't agree with me. There are many things I liked about this movie, but I'd like to point out two.

First, about it's form. It's not a traditional movie, it has some non realist (metaphorical or surreal) scenes, it mixes the reality of the film with the memories, desires and imagination of the characters, it mixes the Swedish life of it's time with Aristophanes play Lysistrata and keeps jumping from one to the other. So you have to think actively to interpret the meaning of these jumps. If you don't like this kind of direction and prefer a more traditional one, perhaps you won't like this movie as much as me (or you will end up thinking the film doesn't have a plot just because you couldn't follow it like some other reviewers). But be assured that this is not confusing nor formalist. It always has meaning and is always related to reality. And this is incredible in a time that most of the art that tries to reach beyond traditional forms looses meaning and relation to reality becoming formalist and sometimes even irrationalist.

Second, about the gender issues. I also liked a lot that it's not a plain movie in which the protagonists give a speech about women freedom and the women rise in a revolt. Actually one may say that this movie is more about trying to reach out and hitting a wall. About women not being taken seriously in a sexist society no matter how hard and seriously they try. Not even by most of the other women. And in this sense, the choice of Lysistrata as a mean to produce change is very good, because the women's revolt in this play was meant to be a joke and not taken seriously. In ancient Athens women were not allowed in the comedies, only in the tragedies, so this play was written by a man, to be represented by a cast of men for an audience of men and not to reach out to women. The critical power of the play, if you may say so, is in the fact that it was an anti-war play, it was meant to help to increase support for a peace treaty with Sparta, but not to really deal with gender issues in the sexist ancient Greece.

All in all this was an avant-garde movie way ahead of it's time. And I disagree with the reviews that state that this is a dated movie. Of course it bears the marks of it's time (like every movie), but perhaps it may even be better appreciated now than when it was filmed.

If you liked this movie you may want to check out Älskande par (Loving Couples), another movie of Mai Zetterling that touch gender issues, but not in such a direct way and with a less innovative and experimental directorial style.