Review: Summer Interlude

Directed by: Ingmar Bergman

Written by: Ingmar Bergman & Herbert Grevenius

Starring: Maj-Britt Nilsson, Birger Malmsten, Alf Kjellin, Annalisa Ericson, Ballet Dancer

Rating: [3.5/5]

Summer romances exist as this perfect little capsule of emotion and passion where the individuals involved know they have a finite amount of time to experience each other and therefore do it to their maximum capacity. But as time has proven, finality arrives, turning what once existed as something neverending into a vestige of the past. Something looked back upon in Summer Interlude as we follow a woman struggling with where her life has left her. 

Following a contentious dress rehearsal at her ballet company, Marie (Maj-Britt Nilsson) receives the diary of Henrik (Birger Malmsten), someone she had a summer affair with thirteen years ago. This prompts her to return to her aunt and uncle’s hometown where the summer affair occurred to seek some sort of closure. 

Past and future merge together in Ingmar Bergman’s Summer Interlude, a film so melancholic in its presentation of its lead character and how her life has progressed. Thus we get a story told both in the present and in flashback displaying how this woman’s outlook in life and relationship with others has evolved, specifically more cynically because of what she has experienced making for something quite moving and a testament to what Bergman could do so early in his career. 

Opening with a shot of Marie and her company rehearsing for their presentation of “Swan Lake,” demonstrates something looking quite beautiful from the outside but those in the know realize the flaws, which makes it all quite contentious. It exhibits what makes Marie so unhappy about this circumstance as she has aged, she no longer has the connections with others she once carried before making what she has experienced quite the tipping point of what occurred. It leads to the moment where her summer affair takes over the screen making for moments of excitement and love all over the air. 

Flashing back shows a young Marie and Henrik gallivanting on this island where they build a connection she would never forget. Through going swimming and spending time together, these moments of romanticism contain all of the tenets of young love everyone loves to see. A sense of carelessness for what everything means in their lives. They simply want to enjoy each other in the way they can in this very moment allowing for quite a moving experience. A sense of freedom exists for the young where they’re more likely to be devoid of serious engagements and connections allowing them to dream for something much larger for themselves when reality will most likely not bear the result they wish. Youth allows for this and this connection with Henrik delivers just that making for these scenes to almost carry this magic within them.

Conversing this with what we see in the present as Marie walks through a strangely quiet environment going through the same places where she had the greatest moments of her young life and now must use them as a source of closure. This walk sees her come across an older woman in black garments, which pretty much summarizes the deathly feeling of the place. Her return here does not display the same youthful wonderment as it did thirteen years prior. Instead, it survives as a memory of where her happiness peaked and whenever everything on the backend of it changed her outlook in life and how she seeks to navigate it in the future. Having this contrast makes the pain she feels that much worse and really gets at what Bergman seeks to communicate through the two timelines and where we find Marie now. 

Nostalgic in its approach but also incredibly moving in its overall thesis, Summer Interlude presents such an engaging story in the way we follow Marie and how her life has progressed. Such an effective film showing this contrast and allowing Bergman to up his game on a visual level as he develops more of the “show don’t tell” approach to expressing the tale of Marie’s youthful past and what it’s become now as she traverses the island and seeks a way to live life at her fullest within these circumstances. Maj-Britt Nilsson does a tremendous job in this role delivering both sides of Marie’s life experience helping us build empathy for both in framing this entire picture of a character we receive.