Paradise Place Movie Review

Paradise Place sounds like it ought to be better than it is. After all, Ingmar Bergman produced it and Gunnel Lindblom, a leading actress in many of his movies, directed it. It features fine performances by Birgitta Valberg and Sif Ruud as a pair of old friends, and by Agneta Ekmanner, an exceptionally pretty child who plays Valberg's granddaughter. And the Swedish countryside couldn't be lovelier. Yet Lindblom tries so hard to make her thematic points that she sacrifices a sense of drama (as the grownups drone on about how society has corrupted their children, one of their own kids is quietly going mad, to their complete indifference). Much of her story takes the form of chatty philosophizing, and by the time action crawls into the final reel, the audience is lost in zzz's and/or a coffee break. AKA: Summer Place; Paradistorg.

1977 112m/C SW Birgitta Valberg, Sif Ruud, Margaretha Bystrom, Agneta Ekmanner, Inga Landgre, Solveig Ternstrom, Dagny Lind, Goran Stangertz, Holger Lowenadler; D: Gunnel Lindblom; W: Gunnel Lindblom, Ulla Isaakson; C: Tony Forsberg; M: George Riedel.