SARABAND
Directed & Written by: Ingmar Bergman.
Director of Photography: Stefan Eriksson, et al.
Edited by: Sylvia Ingemarsson.
Released by: Sony Pictures Classics.
Language: Swedish with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: Sweden. 108 min. Rated: R.
With: Liv Ullman, Erland Josephson, Börje Ahlstedt & Julia Dufvenius.

Sharing family photos with the audience, Marianne (Liv Ullmann) reveals in the opening monologue that she and her ex-husband Johan (Erland Josephson) have had no contact whatsoever in 30 years. Strangely compelled to contact him, she pays him a visit in his remote country cottage. First playfully signaling to the audience to be quite, she sneaks up on him, startling him. He's been waiting for her, curious to why she is there. But the film's focus is not so much on the recriminations or reconciliation of this divorced couple, but on Johan's 61-year-old son from a previous marriage, Henrik (the malleable Borje Ahlstedt) and his beautiful 19-year-old daughter Karin (newcomer Julia Dufvenius). Under her controlling father's tutelage, she aspires to audition for a musical conservatory (the film's title comes from Bach's Fifth Suite Sarabande). There is a fifth character - seen only in a photograph - Hendrik's beloved wife and Karin's mother, Anna, who died two years earlier from cancer.

Although Ullmann and Josephson's characters share the same names as the couple of 1974's Scenes From a Marriage, this is not strictly a sequel. (Their ages and the names of the couple's daughters have been changed from the earlier film.) For those who have seen Scenes, however, the reprising of their roles will bring an instant history, which is helpful because the two share few scenes together. In contrast to Marianne's torturous past, here Ullmann is serene; Johan is still as sarcastically judgmental as ever.

Instead, the battle between father and son dominates, in which Karin is the wedge between the dictatorial Johan and Henrik, who's putty in his father's hands. As Karin, Julia Dufvenius walks with a straight back and the slumped shoulders of a cellist and the obedient daughter that she is, but there is nothing reserved about her performance.

Divided into 10 intimate, almost claustrophobic scenes, Saraband offers snippets, as opposed to fully drawn-out portraits, such as in Scenes. But then again, Scenes' theatrical release was 168 minutes, cut down from its six-hour television running time. Both a valentine to Ullmann and a star-making film debut for Dufvenius, the hermetically-sealed world of Saraband will appeal, however, mostly to Bergman followers. Kent Turner
July 8, 2005