Masterful Cinema

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

One of my film-watching habits is to amble around widely-ranging varieties of films from different directors, different eras, different genres and different countries, then randomly picks one under my own volition, from time to time, I may have a compulsive appetite towards Ingmar Bergman, though whose films often demands a longer interval between, almost 5 months after watching SUMMER INTERLUDE (1951, 7/10), my second entry of this year's Bergman pilgrimage is FACE TO FACE, his latter psychiatric study of a tormented woman's endeavor to find her true self, and the most extraordinary feat is unbiasedly attributed to Liv Ullmann's tour-de-force commitment to her role, a quintessential once-in-a-lifetime liberation to be elicited on the screen, a touchstone for Liv's legendary career! A 35mm color film, Liv Ullmann plays a psychiatrist, who has just emptied her house and relocated to live with her grandparents while waiting to be transferred abroad with her frequent- on-business husband and her daughter, currently is in a student camp. Then the claustrophobic apartment where her grandparents stay apparently is also the place she spent most of her childhood, and it uncannily resurrects the wraith of a forbidding image haunts her once and now reappears, an indeed hair-raiser out of Bergman's indomitable close-framing.Liv's mental condition keeps going downhill after she experiences an unsuccessful rape attempt, which subsequently evokes her inner sexual dissatisfaction and she confides to her new acquaintance she at first met at a friend's birthday party (a fellow doctor whose initiative towards her is a moot and will turn out to be closeted gay man, played by Josephson, who retreats from Liv's counterpart husband in SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE 1973, 8/10 to a sidelined observer) about her innermost desire. Deeply harassed by the recurring wraith she executes a futile suicide, whereupon she alternatively battles between dream and reality, the illusory dream sequences cast a self-emancipating spell on her but remains elusive to its audiences (her strait- laced childhood, the guilt towards her parents' car accident etc.), finally she seems to convalesce from the incubus and decides to return to work and embrace a brand new day as if nothing has happened, the film abruptly ends, withholding its own POV of what will ensue next. Death and love is an eternal theme for Bergman, and they surround each other, through his stoic camera-work and overlong gazes into Liv's escalating breakdown, under the veneer of a normal life, each human individual has a variety of discrepant mentalities contribute to our own distinctiveness and intricacy, within the art form of cinema, no one can best Bergman in this slant and FACE TO FACE is his fastidious anatomy of a living soul to the utmost bareness, as disquieting and repercussive as ever!

I love and greatly admire Ingmar Bergman, Sweden's greatest director by default, and his films. Face to Face is not one of his very best, but of a generally highly impressive resume it is up there as one of the better ones. Sven Nykvist's cinematography is both gorgeous and atmospheric, and the nightmarish dream sequences are really striking. The dialogue as you would except from a Bergman film really makes you think, Bergman's direction is superb and the story is dark, harrowing and hugely personal. Erland Josephson provides an ideal counter-point to Liv Ullman. Bergman regular Gunnar Bjornstrand's role is very short but he does leave an impression. The best asset of Face to Face is easily the extraordinary performance of Liv Ullman, I have yet to see a bad performance from her and this for me was one of her best ever, enormously intense, very commanding and her eyes are as expressive as they ever were. She is especially good in the telling of the attempted rape, which had so many complex emotions, all of them nailed. In conclusion, Face to Face is one of Bergman's better films, if not one of the finest among the likes of The Seventh Seal and Fanny and Alexander, lifted by Ullman's performance. 10/10 Bethany Cox

This movie is nothing short of of a masterpiece of dramatic power and psychological insight. If the mark of a great work of art is that it takes a lot out of you while at the same time giving you a lot, then "Face to Face" is a great film by one of the cinema's (and the theatre's) greatest directors. During the 136-minute film we are confronted with the spectacle of an intelligent woman's soul being laid bare. It is the soul of Jenny Isakson (Liv Ullmann), a Stockholm psychiatrist, as she finds her confidently professional self-assured hold on the world slipping perilously into disarray. Liv Ullmann is of course no stranger to this type of intense Bergman role, from the mute actress of "Persona" to the defeated wife in the 1974 "Scenes form a Marriage" and in films like "Shame," "The Passion of Anna," and "Cries and Whispers." What a marvel!For virtually the entire length of this harrowing piece, the actress is on screen, and she is such a mistress of her craft, one feels like reaching up to the screen to embrace and perhaps congratulate her. It is that kind of moving performance. The much-praised scene in which she tells Erland Josephson about an attempted rape she experienced has the intensity of an operatic aria as she shifts moods: bemused laughter, pleading sobs, hysterical abandon. It is hard to see the junctures between each emotion. They meld into an overwhelming emotional experience. This and the other collaborative efforts of Bergman and Ullman have very few parallels in the history of cinema. Some of them might be: Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman, Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich, G.W. Pabst and Louise Brooks, Federico Fellini and Giulietta Masina.

I saw this with friends when it was first released and twenty minutes after we had left the cinema we realized that no one had spoken. This is a masterful film with Liv Ullman's performance eclipsing any seen on screen. You feel the pain, the hurt and the confusion as you watch this woman's journey. A film for those who like intense, thought provoking and intelligent story telling.