Face to Face

7/31/2018

Shot in 1975, originally for Swedish television, Ingmar Bergman's film ANSIKTE MOT ANSIKTE (Face to Face) explores the idea of a psychiatrist herself struggling with mental illness. As the film opens, Dr. Jenny Isaksson (Liv Ullmann) is standing in an empty house, her family having removed everything in preparation for a move into a new house later that year. In the meantime, her husband is working in America for a few months and her daughter is at a summer camp. Waiting for the family to be reunited and move into the new house, Jenny temporarily settles in with her grandmother (Aino Taube) and grandfather (Gunnar Björnstrand), the latter of whom is poignantly suffering from dementia. Jenny is initially happy to dedicate herself to a new position at the clinic, but soon she finds the wa