ALONE TOGETHER
by Chris Dashiell

The triangle has become almost as constant a presence in drama as it is in geometry. The affair, in its many forms, is a vehicle for whatever the artist's imagination has to tell us about intimacy, desire, responsibility, betrayal, or any number of life's more challenging aspects. How well this story resonates depends on how deep the artist is willing, and able, to go. Most movies don't go very deep. The theme has become hackneyed. But FAITHLESS, written by Ingmar Bergman and directed by Liv Ullmann, keeps going deeper and deeper, reaching a level of raw intensity that is rarely achieved on film these days.

An elderly writer (Erland Josephson), living alone on a windswept island, begins his next work by conjuring the image of a woman named Marianne (Lena Endre) who then tells him her harrowing story. She was a stage actress, married to Markus, a symphony conductor (Thomas Hanzon), and they had a young daughter, Isabelle. She found herself attracted to her husband's best friend, a director named David (Krister Henriksson), and through a subtle series of rationalizations which seemed harmless at the time, decided to have a fling with him in Paris. Unfortunately, the experience unleashed forces within both of them that made it impossible to halt the affair, and eventually it led to a bitter divorce, and consequences that were damaging to all, especially to little Isabelle.

To reveal this much of the story is not to spoil Faithless. This is really a framework, or dramatic premise, after which there are revealed many things that are startling and unexpected. It is not, despite appearance to the contrary, a cautionary tale. Bergman wants to portray the powerful, often destructive desires and impulses lying beneath placid social exteriors. The characters make mistakes based on beliefs about themselves which are superficial. They are also influenced by events outside of them of which they are not aware. Their ordeal, then, is a crisis not of regret for what has happened, but of faith, a challenge to find within themselves a love and a loyalty that transcends pettiness and jealousy and all the pitfalls of their darker sides. That is the drama behind the triangle in Faithless, and it is a painful and moving one indeed.

Bergman stopped directing films about fifteen years ago. He's done some TV work, but mostly he directs theater - and by all accounts he is one of the greatest theater directors working today. The stage has always informed his methods, and it is interesting to see how Faithless gains in power through the odd way the story is told. It could have been told in the usual fashion, without the retrospective element. Instead, much of the film is narrated as well as shown - a most uncinematic method which is nevertheless very effective with this material. The drama is conveyed through the words of Marianne, and the emotions she displays, much more than through the remembered images she narrates.

This is Liv Ullmann's third feature as a director, and it
shows a marked increase in her self-assurance. She melds film and theater technique in exciting ways - one sequence, for instance, in which Marianne stands in a dreamlike empty space, in right profile, while the image of her little daughter appears in the background as a specter of guilt, has great impact.

It is the central performance of Lena Endre, however, that really makes the film work. Her emotional range is so wide and deep, and her expressions so many-faceted, that she becomes one with her character in a way that is astonishing to behold. She portrays strength and frailty, sensual exuberance and tragic resignation, with equal facility. Ironically, her performance is so powerful that it tends to put the other actors in a poor light.

Krister Henriksson's petulant and self-absorbed lover is often quite unappealing, and the drama of his guilt - crucial to Bergman's conception - lacks the emotional heft of Marianne's complex inner story. Still, blindness is part of the equation as well, and David's choices are consistent with the problem of self-awareness which is one of the film's main themes.

Reviewers of Faithless have consistently remarked on the picture's autobiographical nature. Admittedly the story is more transparent in that respect than most, but surely we know by now that Bergman's work all shares this quality? To me it seems a waste to spend so many words commenting on such things. It either distances us from the universal aspects of a film, or (as I have noticed) provides an excuse to attack it as too introspective. If you're going to go to a film written by Ingmar Bergman, you might as well expect an experience which is strongly theatrical and introspective.

Personally I find him compelling even when I argue with him. In this case, his usual, somewhat annoying sense of male prerogative is in evidence, but fortunately it is undercut, and redeemed, by the female point of view - strongly conveyed by its woman director (Ullmann) and star (Endre). Faithless is an intense journey down a long, sad road of understanding. It is worth the trip.

On the other end of the spectrum in terms of technique, but just as worthwhile if not more so, is IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE. The title provides a clue - Wong Kar-Wai's latest film is all about mood. Yes, there's a story, about the love of a man and a woman whose spouses are having an affair. But Wong's purpose, and his achievement, is the creation of a mood and a feeling through pure cinema - sound and image in abundance, narrative/dramatic devices in as short supply as possible. And it works, magnificently. In the Mood for Love is a film of beauty, defying all expectation. Here is proof - if anyone still needed any - that Wong is one of the greatest living directors.

Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) are neighbors in a crowded apartment building in 1962 Hong Kong. Naturally they often encounter each other in the building's narrow hallway. Gradually, separately, they realize that their spouses, who are frequently away on business trips, are having an affair. This leaves our couple alone a great deal of the time, and they reach out to each other, through shared pain and then through love and longing. A curious form of bonding occurs through play-acting - Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow pretend that they are their adulterous spouses, imagining how the affair started, or rehearsing possible scenes of confrontation.

So much for the story. Which is not to say that there is no story, only that the focus is intensely inward. Wong is interested, first of all, in the ache of nostalgic memory, the way important events in a life are forever associated with the image of a place, the sound of a song - the slightest of ordinary details taking on immense personal significance by being set forever in a regret for the past. He is also interested, secondly, in feelings as the constant personal backdrop for all events, and all merely mental or verbal accounts. The attempt to explain this inevitably sounds abstract. The experience of the viewer is anything but. This film presents emotion as a tangible reality to be experienced fully, to be surrendered to like an overwhelming force. The technique is extremely controlled. Wong balances his heavily determined method with a graceful, adventurous editing style. The result is something of a miracle - the feeling states of these people, during their time, strongly recreated as mood in the viewer, through the sole means of cinematic technique. For me, the experience was haunting and dreamlike, like a powerful piece of music.

Wong's use of music, in fact, is a good indicator of his method. The usual practice is for a score to accompany action with variations on a theme, or several. In the Mood for Love's plaintive theme for strings, by Mike Galasso, occurs at discrete intervals, not as counterpoint to the story, but as mood episodes in themselves, usually with the figures of Leung or Cheung in slow motion, by which the film's sense of captured time is intensified. Another usual practice in other movies is to pepper a film score with various songs or pop tunes as shorthand for whatever developments are taking place. In this film, however, the theme is always identical, always repeated - and the same is true for the song ("Quizas, Quizas, Quizas") performed in Spanish by Nat King Cole. Repetition deepens the effect more and more, so that by the time we've heard Galasso's theme, or the Cole song, for the fifth or sixth time, we feel drenched in the moods of aching sadness, in the former case, or wistful romanticism, in the latter.

Wong's camera often shows only one face, with the other person off screen, which accentuates the subjective feeling. He never shows their spouses' faces - their effect must always come from outside the frame. Even though much of the picture is shot in interiors, the closeness is one of intimacy rather than confinement. The use of mirrors, the careful composition of the figures in every shot, the lighting and color, are all single-pointed in their intent. Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan are transfixed by their feelings for each other, kept apart by their strong sense of honor, always daring themselves to come closer. Every element serves this end, especially the two stars themselves, who shine in what must have been very difficult work. Maggie Cheung conveys a world of feeling about her character with just her body language and facial expressions - this is a performance of amazing control. And Leung is almost as good in his portrayal of inner struggle.

Wong Kar-Wai has always been in the forefront of the pop avant- garde. Here he foregoes his signature style, in which he often used hand-held camera, for a gliding, meditative approach using the traditional studio camera. Like a musician who knows how to break the rules because he knows the rules, Wong has made a film of radical formal beauty out of classic materials. He knows the rules, backwards and forwards.

For the viewer who doesn't care about how it's done, but only goes to the movies for the experience, In the Mood for Love offers something different, and very rewarding. Instead of just a story of love, experience the emotions of the lovers as if they were your own in that moment, evoked through a mysterious conjunction of sound and image, and afterwards, if you can allow it - float out of the theater on a cloud.

CineScene, 2001