Scenes from a Marriage

The TV version is more fleshed out, but I think the film version covers the same territory. As much as Persona visually and thematically gave me a jolt, it's this late Bergman movie that had me captivated through every nuanced close-up, every line of dialogue. It's his most intense, bare-boned study of a man and a woman, and it's so cathartic in its desperate moments and verbal lacerations that you can hardly say the tone is grave or humorous, it's just pathetically true. If you jump to 2:40 in this clip, Marianne reads out of her diary as we're shown a series of photos of actress Liv Ullmann through the years. It's a device that I love and tried playing with in my short film Strangers. There are many similarities between the qualities Marianne reveals about herself and those of my female lead in Intoxicated.  Like Marianne, my character tries to "go on pretending, faking [her] relationships with others, with men. Always putting on an act in a desperate attempt to please." It's a bit negative, but it's intriguing.