I feel a little mixed on what ended up being Ingmar Bergman's final film. There are good performances and some excellently written sequences, but not every scene feels dynamic or riveting in the same way that almost every section from Scenes From a Marriage did.
Speaking of, this is billed as a sequel to that film, but I think that's a tad misleading. It's a semi-sequel, giving some follow-up to the characters from the 1973 miniseries/film, but a good deal of it follows the son and granddaughter of Johansson. It was almost to the point where the uncomfortable story about a man and his inappropriate relationship with his daughter after his wife dies felt like a movie that Bergman sort of worked the Scenes From a Marriage characters into.
It focuses in on the two main characters near the end, which was good, but it also drove home how divorced (pun intended) they felt from many of the other scenes.
If I'd known what the film was about going in, I may have appreciated it more and been less shocked. That still wouldn't have helped some of the more unusual creative decisions Bergman takes with the visuals at some points- maybe he was just going for broke, because he knew this would be his final filmic statement.
Speaking of, this is billed as a sequel to that film, but I think that's a tad misleading. It's a semi-sequel, giving some follow-up to the characters from the 1973 miniseries/film, but a good deal of it follows the son and granddaughter of Johansson. It was almost to the point where the uncomfortable story about a man and his inappropriate relationship with his daughter after his wife dies felt like a movie that Bergman sort of worked the Scenes From a Marriage characters into.
It focuses in on the two main characters near the end, which was good, but it also drove home how divorced (pun intended) they felt from many of the other scenes.
If I'd known what the film was about going in, I may have appreciated it more and been less shocked. That still wouldn't have helped some of the more unusual creative decisions Bergman takes with the visuals at some points- maybe he was just going for broke, because he knew this would be his final filmic statement.