Face to Face [Ansikte mot ansikte] **** (1976, Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson, Aino Taube, Gunnar Björnstrand) – Classic Movie Review 10,893

Writer-producer-director Ingmar Bergman deals with his own angst about failing relationships in the 1976 Swedish drama Face to Face [Ansikte mot ansikte], one of two TV movies/films he made at around this time (the other is the 1974 Scenes from a Marriage).

Liv Ullmann is astonishingly convincing and powerful as Dr Jenny Isaksson, a troubled Stockholm psychiatrist who stays with her grandparents (Aino Taube, Gunnar Björnstrand) when her husband (Sven Lindberg) and uncommunicative teenage daughter (Helene Friberg) are away while their new house is being built.

Dr Isaksson can’t help herself as terrible nightmares herald a nervous breakdown, but a gay doctor Tomas Jacobi (Erland Josephson) she meets at a party offers some comfort and they become friends and companions.

Face to Face [Ansikte mot ansikte] won the Golden Globe as Best Foreign Film. Both director Bergman and Ullmann were Oscar nominated, as Best Director and Best Actress respectively. At the Oscars, 1976 (Face To Face and Seven Beauties) and 2018 (Roma and Cold War) are the only instances in which two foreign language films were nominated for Best Director in the same year.

Originally a four-parter for Swedish TV, running 176 minutes. The cinema version runs 114 minutes or 136 minutes UK version.

Also in the cast are Kari Sylwan, Siv Ruud, Sven Lindberg, Tore Segelcke, Ulf Johansson, Gosta Ekman and Kristina Adolphson.

It is shot in Eastmancolor by Sven Nykvist.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 10,893

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