It must be agonizing to be deeply in love with someone who feels only a casual and momentary attraction to you. Better, the object of all that affection should be completely indifferent, and still better if the other person hates your guts. But that, along with a lot of multi-layered symbolism is what the movie is all about.
But this is 1953 and it would be a mistake to confuse "Summer With Monica" with Ingmar Bergman's later stuff, like "Scenes From A Marriage," by which time he'd gotten all minimalist and spiritual. In "Scenes From A Marriage," a man and wife talk for two hours in a single room. The Big Reveal leads to one or the other raising his or her eyebrows. I don't remember. I've done my best to forget. My wife dragged me to it and after a few minutes of fierce boredom I began to doze off the way I do at the opera. I haven't looked but I'd be surprised if "Scenes From A Marriage" didn't get a statistically significant better approval rating from women than men.
Anyway, compared to that, "Summer With Monica" looks like a John Wayne Western from the 1930s. Lots of action. The two lovers, Lars Ekborg and Harriet Andersson are having a miserable time in the city. He's nineteen and has no aim in life. She's eighteen and lives in a cramped apartment with her drunken father and a horde of squalling brothers and sisters. They run off and spend the summer together on Lars' small boat, roaming the rustic waterways, swimming naked, getting drunk, eating wild mushrooms, and spending nights devoted to the delicacies of Venus. She gets pregnant. (It was a shocker in its time and shown only in art houses.) As summer draws to a close they return to the city, where Lars finds a satisfying job and Andersson remains the narcissistic, self-indulgent slob she was during the summer. And worse. When he returns early from a job, he finds her in bed with another man. She spitefully tells Lars that she loved the guy she was sleeping with.
I don't want to go on about the plot except to emphasize that it moves very quickly. Lars' acting is okay. He's an earnest young man who takes the short Scandinavian summer off when the Minnesingers arrive and the cuckoo sings. He's all right but Andersson's is a compelling character and she is an enthralling actress. If you doubt it, watch the scene in Bergman's "Through A Glass Darkly" when her hallucinated vision of God turns into a giant spider.
Bergman's direction is stylistically innovative but in a curiously quiet way that doesn't draw much attention to itself. At times, it can only be described as "artistic." I don't just mean the picture postcard compositions of fields of waving reeds, or the liquid reflection of the sun breaking into multiple scintillating globes before coalescing again as the ripples pass, or the black-and-white rainbow.
The ugliness is turned into beauty too, like a shot of the stark, black steel girders of a bridge that the lovers camp under. And there is one shot that simply would never have occurred to any American director of the period. Lars leaves on a business trip after handing her some money to pay the month's rent. Instead, Andersson gussies up in front of the mirror and sits in a bar. The camera holds for an outrageously long time on her stunning face, turned halfway towards the lens, assessing the audience out of the sides of her eyes, her sensuous lips ready for business.
You know, the summers are brief, like life, Bergman seems to be telling us. Better enjoy them while we can, before we have to buckle down to the business of getting along for eternity.
But this is 1953 and it would be a mistake to confuse "Summer With Monica" with Ingmar Bergman's later stuff, like "Scenes From A Marriage," by which time he'd gotten all minimalist and spiritual. In "Scenes From A Marriage," a man and wife talk for two hours in a single room. The Big Reveal leads to one or the other raising his or her eyebrows. I don't remember. I've done my best to forget. My wife dragged me to it and after a few minutes of fierce boredom I began to doze off the way I do at the opera. I haven't looked but I'd be surprised if "Scenes From A Marriage" didn't get a statistically significant better approval rating from women than men.
Anyway, compared to that, "Summer With Monica" looks like a John Wayne Western from the 1930s. Lots of action. The two lovers, Lars Ekborg and Harriet Andersson are having a miserable time in the city. He's nineteen and has no aim in life. She's eighteen and lives in a cramped apartment with her drunken father and a horde of squalling brothers and sisters. They run off and spend the summer together on Lars' small boat, roaming the rustic waterways, swimming naked, getting drunk, eating wild mushrooms, and spending nights devoted to the delicacies of Venus. She gets pregnant. (It was a shocker in its time and shown only in art houses.) As summer draws to a close they return to the city, where Lars finds a satisfying job and Andersson remains the narcissistic, self-indulgent slob she was during the summer. And worse. When he returns early from a job, he finds her in bed with another man. She spitefully tells Lars that she loved the guy she was sleeping with.
I don't want to go on about the plot except to emphasize that it moves very quickly. Lars' acting is okay. He's an earnest young man who takes the short Scandinavian summer off when the Minnesingers arrive and the cuckoo sings. He's all right but Andersson's is a compelling character and she is an enthralling actress. If you doubt it, watch the scene in Bergman's "Through A Glass Darkly" when her hallucinated vision of God turns into a giant spider.
Bergman's direction is stylistically innovative but in a curiously quiet way that doesn't draw much attention to itself. At times, it can only be described as "artistic." I don't just mean the picture postcard compositions of fields of waving reeds, or the liquid reflection of the sun breaking into multiple scintillating globes before coalescing again as the ripples pass, or the black-and-white rainbow.
The ugliness is turned into beauty too, like a shot of the stark, black steel girders of a bridge that the lovers camp under. And there is one shot that simply would never have occurred to any American director of the period. Lars leaves on a business trip after handing her some money to pay the month's rent. Instead, Andersson gussies up in front of the mirror and sits in a bar. The camera holds for an outrageously long time on her stunning face, turned halfway towards the lens, assessing the audience out of the sides of her eyes, her sensuous lips ready for business.
You know, the summers are brief, like life, Bergman seems to be telling us. Better enjoy them while we can, before we have to buckle down to the business of getting along for eternity.