There’s no sub-genre more personal to me right now than the coming-of-age film. The best ones, The Tree of Life (2011), Boyhood (2014), Fanny och Alexander (1983), and the first half of Once Upon a Time in America are also some of my favorite films because they all remind me of when I was much younger. Recently, though, I watched a little foreign film from the big Ingmar Bergman that I feel many more people should see: Summer Interlude (1951).
Ingmar Bergman is to cinema what Kanye West is to rap music: prolific, bold, and consistent. You may not agree with my comparison (it’s very weak), but if you frequent my blog, you’d know that’s a compliment in the highest sense. Bergman is so good that some of his smallest films would be masterpieces in many other director’s filmographies. I always overlooked Summer Interlude as Diet Bergman, a small taste of what his best work represents. However, after viewing the film, I believe Summer Interlude has been overlooked because he just has so many other films that other cinephiles love more.
The movie follows Marie, a ballerina, who reflects back on a summer fling she had back when she was a teenager. Young love is presented much better here than the current teenage romances (like If I Stay). There is no cliches in Bergman’s film, and if there were, he films it all with an equal amount of beauty and passion. His young lovers, Marie (the impossibly cute Maj-Britt Nilsson) and Henrik (Birger Malmsten) spend most of the movie swimming or cuddling with Henrik’s fluffy white dog, yet it never bores. There’s even an animated sequence that illustrates Henrik’s fantasy of being a hero; however, it doesn’t feel out of place.
There’s a line in the film that struck a chord with me. In a scene that has Marie and Henrik describe what love feels like, they describe the cliches like tingly feelings in the heart. Henrik tells Marie that “when I see you, my knees turn to applesauce.” It’s a line that warmed my heart and made me crave applesauce, but it was after a little bit of reflection, I realized how real that line was. It was only recently that my first high school relationship ended with a whimper, but the line reminded me so much of the good times. How when I would see her from the other side of the school hallway, I would smile and feel a warm shiver, and my knees would turn to applesauce, much like Henrik’s.
Outside of the plot, the movie is made impeccably. Every performance finds the balance of cinematic and real, and every shot is made up of some elegance that makes the lingering love so darn interesting. It’s a real shame that the film hasn’t been seen by more people, but for the patient teenager that doesn’t mind subtitles, the film could easily be a favorite. I know its now one of mine.
Wu Chainz 