The Swedish maestro's mature works are not noted for brevity, and this exhaustive - and exhausting - examination of a relationship rocked by infidelity is not recommended for Bergman novices.
Composed almost entirely of introspective dialogues in Ikea interiors, the scenes originally added up to a six-part TV series before being edited down to this 167-minute theatrical version, and the joins sometimes show.
That said, Bergman shows surgical precision in peeling away layers of the human psyche, and he is admirably served by regular collaborators, Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson and Bibi Andersson, all of them framed in complicit close-up by Sven Nykvist's photography.
