Director Ingmar Bergman with Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman

Hmmm. At the point where the camera shifts from Elisabet to Alma so that the audience has to listen to the latter’s purported account of the birth of Elisabet’s son for a second time, I lost all interest and patience. There are so many – possible – themes: identity, truth, secrets, sex, atrocities, love and rejection, a hint of vampirism (?) . . . that I could get no handle on it and was bored. Give me one or two themes in a film, but don’t overwhelm me with them otherwise I will look away and turn to words as a more appropriate form of expression. It looks wonderful – how could it not, with two beautiful, stylish women who resemble each other and are filmed so cleverly? The occasional breaking-up of the physical film comes over like the expression of a scream – and reminds you that it’s only a film. But, oh, it was so obscure and self-referential that I wanted to scream myself before the end.

Up there with Last Year in Marienbad as a film that was a chore to sit through to the end.