This Ingmar Bergman film stars marvellously - a pre credit title sequence explaining that an artist has gone missing on an island, a credit sequence with the sounds of a film crew, Liv Ullman explaining to the audience about her situation, the creepy atmosphere of the wind swept island. Max Von Sydow is a tortured artist with his younger ever loving wife Ullman who adores him (I bet Woody Allen loves this).
Von Sydow is beset by demons - memories of past incidents, fears of his own inadequacies, visions of killing a small boy and past lovers. He visits a weird dinner party which is like something out of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, winds up his his naked ex spread eagled on a table wearing face paint.
It's part horror film part surrealistic fable part Gothic fairytale part... well, anything. It's hard going at times, occasionally spills into silliness (sorry Bergman fans but that's what it felt like), atmospheric and impactful. I would love for Bergman to have made a straight out horror film but this is quite close (in the way that Shame is his war film).
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