Cinematical

One of the most anticipated films of the Seattle International Film Festival was Saraband, which Ingmar Bergman has said will be his "swan song". The film stars Liv Ullman and Erland Josephson, reprising their roles as Marianne and Johan from 1973's Scenes From a Marriage, another Bergman film originally made for television - but you don't need to have seen the first to appreciate the second.

Before the movie started, the SIFF staff member doing the intro told us that a "saraband" is an intricate dance; the Sarabande is also part of Bach's famous cello suites. The suites were developed as Baroque dance music in six movements;  the fourth movement, the Sarabande, is a 3-beat slow dance from Spain, and is considered the emotional heart of the suite.  The Sarabandes are notoriously intricate and difficult to play.

The film's title is remarkably apt; this is a complex film about  relationships - specifically, the complicated relationships within this dysfunctional family: Marianne's with her daughters, who she never sees; Marianne's with Johan; Johan's with his son Henrik and granddaughter Karin; and Henrik, Karin and Johan's  relationship with Henrik's deceased wife, Anna, revealed through a series of emotional dialogues.

Monologues from Marianne bookend this look into the somewhat disturbing and intricate relationships within this family. The  heart of the story is revealed in the dialogues, which are played out so intimately one often feels as though one is watching a stage play or an intricate ballet, rather than a film. Bergman's dialogue is baroque and poetic, and his actors deftly evoke the emotions Bergman explores in this film; jealously, obsession, rage, anger, are all emoted with smoldering intensity. As the film opens, Marianne is sifting through photographs that cover a large table, and reflecting on her life. She speaks of her daughters with Johan - one lives in an institution and the other in Australia - and she has little contact with either. Johan has retreated to a secluded refuge, and Marianne has not seen him or spoken to him for over 30 years, since their marriage ended in a downward spiral of mutual unfaithfulness. Marianne decides on a whim, after all these years, to go and see Johan.

Bergman's attention to the little details, as always, is paramount. The creak of a floorboard, the chirp of a cuckoo clock, the slamming of a door, the chords of an organ, even little details like the aging of the cottage and its inhabitants, are all given minute attention. Johan is not at all happy to see Marianne after all these years. "You didn't seem enthused about my coming," says Marianne. "I told you not to come," crusty Johan fires back.

Marianne meets Johan's granddaughter, Karin, a cello prodigy who is staying in Johan's cottage with her father, Henrik. Karin attaches to Marianne as an older woman to listen to her troubles; her father is also her demanding teacher, but there is far more to their entangled relationship than that of father- daughter and student-teacher. The most powerful character in the film is the one we never see except in photographs: the dead Anna, deeply beloved wife of Henrik, to whom Johan also has a powerful attachment; each character's emotional tie to Anna impacts his or her relationship to the other characters.

The dialogue between Johan and Henrik is almost painful to watch - Johan seethes with barely suppressed rage at his son, and the son barely manages to keep a lid on his resentment and hate of his father. Henrik has come to Johan to beg him for the money to purchase an expensive cello for Karin; Johan adores his granddaughter and would do almost anything for her, but he will extract every ounce of squirming humility out of his son as possible before acquiescing. The tension between Johan and  Henrik was so taut, I almost expected father and son to go to blows. This scene, and scenes between Henrik and Karin that hint at an incestuous, or at least, deeply twisted, relationship, brought to mind another excellent film, 1998's Festen (The Celebration), in which dark family secrets boil over at a genteel birthday celebration. Saraband has that same feel of darkness and depravity lurking beneath the surface of these characters.

Saraband was filmed digitally, and Bergman makes excellent use of his medium with lingering close-ups on his actors, who convey emotion with every twitch of an eyebrow. Josephson and Ullman are  perfection on film, invoking in their characters that intricate balance of tenderness and forgiveness known to couples who have years of history and mistakes between them, with anger tempered by passing years into fond regret. Ullman is still one of the most beautiful actresses ever to grace the silver screen, and her acting is sublime, but the real standout of this film is newcomer Julia Dufvenius as Karin, from whom Bergman extracts an emotionally wrenching performance. Watching her in this film, I wished fervently for Bergman to renege once again on his promise to retire, just to see how Dufvenius might grow and mature as an actress given the opportunity to work with Bergman on more films. Borje Ahlstedt, as Henrik, gives a carefully controlled performance, and his scenes with Ullman and Josephson are particularly powerful.

Saraband is said to be very autobiographical. Bergman had an affair with Ullman (the two have a daughter), and the character of Anna (and the photograph of Anna seen in the film) is Bergman's beloved wife, Ingrid Von Rosen, who died in 1994 of stomach cancer. Bergman revealed in his memoirs last year that he is the biological father of Von Rosen's daughter, Maria Von Rosen, who was 12 when Bergman and Von Rosen married. Saraband is dedicated "to Ingrid, till Ingrid" - a fitting finale for this master of film.