(Nelson Pressley’s article appeared in the Washington Post, 12/7.)
In “Private Confessions,” the late Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman applied his astringent style to the story of his mother’s marital infidelity. The story is scoured free of distractions; in a series of murmured discussions peppered with anguished outbursts, nothing comes between the audience and Bergman’s fundamental concerns of guilt and desire, love and God.
Longtime Bergman actress Liv Ullmann, Bergman’s romantic partner for a time, directed the film of the autobiographical script in 1996, and she’s scaled it up for the National Theater of Norway stage version that’s in the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater through Saturday. That’s not to say she’s pumped it up: the small cast is mic’d, so the one-on-one confessionals and confrontations, in Norwegian with projected English titles, are still acted as if the camera’s in tight.
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