Directed by Ingmar Bergman
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Blu-ray, Criterion Collection)
Immature and impulsive teenager Harriet Andersson forces herself on reserved and naive Lars Ekborg. Their tentative relationship becomes serious when she runs away from home and he agrees to put her up in his dad's small boat. After he gets fired from his manual labor job, they take the boat to a remote area and live for the summer with no responsibilities. After a month or two, their need for food drives them to steal from a nearby orchard. She is caught but later escapes, however they have no choice but to return to the dreaded city they left behind. Pregnant, they get married and he goes to school in an attempt to provide them with a future while she sits at home complaining of the lack of money to buy clothes or go out. Soon, she returns to her former lifestyle and has an affair, leading to their break up. It's interesting to compare this to Summer Interlude made only a few years earlier. Here, the boy's romantic idealism is shattered by his wife's adultery, whereas in Summer Interlude the genders are reversed and it is a tragic accident that ends the love affair. It seems Bergman refuses to let young lovers be happy, something always comes along to end it. I don't know the intimate details of Bergman's life, but by the time of this film he was on his third marriage at the age of 35 and would soon embark on a love affair with its star Harriet Andersson.
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