AFTER THE REHEARSAL Movie Review

Efter Repetitionen

If you've seen Deconstructing Harry and you're more than a bit curious as to why Woody Allen has always been so fascinated with Ingmar Bergman, the modestly mounted but deeply moving After the Rehearsal is as good a place as any to start. As an aging and legendary director named Henrik Vogler (Erland Josephson) prepares work on a new production of August Strindberg's A Dream Play, a young actress (Lena Olin) enters the theatre, joins him on the ghostly, not-quite-bare stage, and engages him in a conversation that will prove revelatory to them both. Will this exquisite young woman be another in the director's parade of sexual conquests? Or is it possible that she is, in fact, the child of an affair he had with her mother? As Vogler (the name so often given to the protagonists of Bergman's most outwardly autobiographical films) ruminates about his compulsive couplings and the theatrical creations that have in every sense constituted his work and his life, he ultimately arrives at that point at which he faces the big questions about the convergence of art and life. Is being a great creator justification for leading a dishonest and often sordid life of one's own? As in most of his films, Bergman doesn't claim to have the answer. But who else could so bluntly and chillingly pose the question?

NEXT STOP … The Magician, Persona, Face to Face

1984 (R) 72m/C SW Erland Josephson, Ingrid Thulin, Lena Olin; D: Ingmar Bergman; W: Ingmar Bergman; C: Sven Nykvist. VHS COL