![]() This isn’t to say that Charlotte is a horrific monster. Eva didn’t tell her mother that Helena was there, knowing full well that Charlotte wouldn’t have come if she had known. ![]() Charlotte is also shaken by the presence of Helena, who is confined to bed, her frail body ravaged by disease. ![]() Eva cowers her way through the first part of the film until she finally bursts and lets loose on her mother. Quite often beautiful in Bergman’s films, Ullmann shrinks into her role, cowed by low self-esteem and the tyranny of her mother. The pain on Ullmann’s face speaks to years of torment. Rather than honor her daughter’s success, Charlotte immediately ups the ante by talking up her own recent successes. The tension appears almost immediately when Eva, a novice musician, tells her mother about some local concerts she has played. Charlotte is a narcissist of the worst kind, arriving at Eva’s house with a burst of bravado in designer clothes and wielding stories of all her exciting engagements. Charlotte can remember which piece she played on any certain date, but her recollection of Eva’s childhood is murky. Charlotte spent much of Eva’s childhood on tour, neglecting her children and cuckolding her husband (Erland Josephson). My wife’s father died when she was nine and her mother sent her away to boarding school shortly after. Eva is not only bitter with Charlotte for her absenteeism in Erik’s short life, but also how Charlotte’s career always came before Eva, her father and her sister Helena (Lena Nyman), who is now dying of a degenerative disease. But this is Bergman and other the film’s brief running time, Eva launches a venomous attack on Charlotte, returning the unwitting woman to the scene of the crime: Eva’s neglected girlhood. Charlotte, a world-famous pianist, hasn’t visited in seven years, meaning she wasn’t present for either Erik’s birth or death.Īt first glance, Eva and Charlotte are thrilled by the reunion, even though Charlotte is mourning the recent death of her lover. Eva is a bookish journalist who is still suffering from the loss of her young son, Erik, who drowned just shy of his fourth birthday. Ullmann stars as Eva, a middle-aged woman who invites her mother, Charlotte (Bergman), to visit her and her husband on their remote estate. It is the story of a family where past trauma has snaked its way into the present, rifts and trauma worsened, not healed, by time. Hauntingly filmed by Ingmar Bergman’s frequent collaborator Sven Nykvist, Autumn Sonata strikes a similar vein as Cries and Whispers. Ingmar Bergman tackles a similar predicament in Autumn Sonata, his 1978 chamber piece starring Liv Ullmann and screen legend Ingrid Bergman in her final film appearance. In many years, it was for the best that she stayed away. Although it pained my wife, this curt dismissal was not out of character for her mother. She forgot birthdays, decided to see the pyramids in Egypt rather than come home and spend the holidays with us. She lived in Asia, sending fading, short emails when it suited her. For a few years, we didn’t have my mother-in-law’s telephone number.
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