Autumn Sonata

When the successful concert pianist Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman, in her only film with Ingmar Bergman) for the first time in years pays a visit to her neglected grown-up daughter Eva (Liv Ullmann, Bergman’s recurring lead), she is unprepared for who her daughter has become. The result is a chamber play on the torments of the human soul, of love avoided, attempted, and denied – but also, as often with Bergman, the relation between Life and Art. The film itself was shot on the outskirts of Oslo, Norway, during Bergman’s self-imposed exile from the tax authorities in Sweden. Chopin’s prelude and Bergman’s characteristic close-ups of faces form the foundation for repressed pain while the performances are stellar in this powerful exploration of tortured family dynamics.