Somewhat surprisingly, this was completely absorbing. I had the impression that Bergman would be a slog, but I was riveted from start to finish. There’s so much power in these two women. Although it’s not always clear exactly what is going on, you always feel like you know, which is just as important. I had read somewhere that this was about a woman adopting the other’s persona and was expecting something along those lines, but I felt fairly early on that was not what I was watching — way more going on.
This is my first Bergman film. It’s kind of hard to believe that the insufferably pretentious kid I used to be never picked up a VHS copy of this at Planet Video back in the day.