Directed by Liv Ullmann from a script by Ingmar Bergman and starring Lena Endre and Erland Josephson, FAITHLESS is a story of passion and infidelity based on a real event in Bergman’s past. A sensation at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where Lena Endre’s bravura lead performance was justly celebrated, the film has also been featured at the Toronto, Telluride, New York and Montreal film festivals. FAITHLESS will have its U.S. theatrical release in late January 2001.
Lyrical, passionate, and enigmatic, FAITHLESS begins with a writer named Bergman (Erland Josephson, who co-starred with Ullmann in Bergman’s 1974 Scenes From a Marriage) summoning his muse in the form of a memory. Marianne (Lena Endre) appears to Bergman as he sits down to write a script about a love affair of long ago. As she discusses ideas for the story with Bergman, she is transformed into the main character of the film that he is now writing.
Marianne Vogler is a successful actress happily married to Markus (Thomas Hanzon), an orchestra conductor much in demand for overseas concerts and devoted to her young daughter Isabelle (Michelle Gylemo). Into this easy equation steps family friend David (Krister Henriksson), a film director notorious for his reckless attitude toward relationships. Marianne’s friendship with David develops into passion, and they yield to temptation, traveling to Paris to indulge in an affair that then continues upon their return to Sweden.
Eventually Markus, who has suspected the affair all along, confronts the faithless couple, his wife and friend, in the very bedroom they have been meeting in. He demands divorce and custody of Isabelle. Marianne begs Markus to let her have Isabelle, but he refuses. What began as a casual affair threatens to destroy a marriage, a friendship, a family, and a man.
Despite the film’s dark themes, Lena Endre triumphs with her radiant performance. Onscreen for most of the film, Endre’s Marianne is a woman whose passion and intelligence makes her choices a story of unforgettable emotional power.
Liv Ullmann’s second film based on a Bergman screenplay (1997’s Private Confessions was the first), FAITHLESS is the latest of many collaborations between Bergman and Ullmann. Ullmann has been featured as an actress in nine of the director’s greatest films including Persona (1966), Scenes From A Marriage (1974), and Autumn Sonata (1978). Filled with references to Bergman’s films and to his life as a man and an artist, FAITHLESS is timeless meditation upon relationships between women, men, art and love.
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