Faithless (Trolosa )

Heading into the local arthouse for a matinee screening of Faithless, I was surprised to find so many people inside. Don't these people realize that this is not going to be a mindless romp like The Mummy Returns or an explosive Pearl Harbor filled with old time soap opera sentimentality? As I settled into my seat, my fears abated . . . Relatively sparse pre-film talking and laughing was taking place. This was a serious and somber crowd-perfect for an Ingmar Bergman film.

Make no mistake about it; Faithless belongs in Ingmar Bergman's canon of works along with the far superior Wild Strawberries and Persona even though the legendary 82-year old Swedish director doesn't get behind the camera this time. It's still his script, and his former lover, Liv Ullmann, re-creates her Persona role in real life, merging with Bergman's cinematic sensibilities so much that you'll swear that Bergman is the director. Who else has better credentials to know the psychology and thinking of the screenwriter?-she acted in nine of his films.

Actually, Ullmann amplifies Bergman's well-known strength of being able to get inside a woman's mind with the way she handles Marianne (Lena Endre) and the turmoil she suffers in her ill-fated love affair. Adultery and its consequences form the core of the plot-Bergman's latest obsession, as his previous made-for-TV 1996 screenplay Personal Confessions (also directed by Ullmann) deals with the same theme. Could Bergman be dealing with the guilt he feels about such an affair?

Shades of other Bergman films populate the somber Faithless, beginning with a lonely elderly man (named "Bergman" when we see the end credits), who lives in a spartan house on the ocean shore. With these first images the audience immediately begins to look for Bergman's trademark symbols-what does the eternal ocean signify, and what about those gnarled trees? But sometimes oceans are just oceans and trees are just trees. And Bergman's script even pokes fun at pretentiousness, telling us to take the film at its simplest terms.

Getting down to basics, the film focuses on the ill-fated illicit affair that Marianne has with movie director David (Krister Henriksson), who happens to be the best friend of Marianne's husband Markus (Thomas Hanzon), a musician/conductor who is often on tour. Added to the family mix is an eight-year old daughter Isabelle (Michelle Gylemo). Told via flashbacks and in such a way that we realize that the old man is David, the initially joyful tryst that Marianne undertakes with David in Paris only self-destructively leads to pain, guilt, and unforgiving regrets that will plague both lovers.

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