After the Rehearsal (1984)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

After the Rehearsal (1984) – I. Bergman

Bergman, like Fellini, often makes films seemingly about himself, his life circumstances, or, of course, his personal psychological and philosophical concerns. Here, in a small chamber play for television, he is either delivering an apologia for his years of affairs with his leading actresses or he is truly acknowledging the misfortune he has inflicted on the lives of others. Erland Josephson, a recurring Bergman stand-in, plays Vogler, an older playwright/director currently rehearsing Strindberg’s A Dream Play. Young Lena Olin (pre-Hollywood) plays the actress, Anna, he has cast in the lead (as Indra’s Daughter – who visits humanity and witnesses their misfortunes). After the day’s rehearsal, she makes her way on stage where the director is resting, caught up in his own thoughts (which we hear in voiceover). What follows seems both meticulously prepared and yet organic – the conversation follows normal logic, only slowly getting to the point.  But what is that point? The director has known the actress since she was born and indeed had a on-and-off affair with her mother, also an actress.  The mother (Ingrid Thulin) soon makes an appearance which seems to be only in the director’s mind (Olin sits motionless while Josephson and Thulin run their lines, but is sometimes replaced by a 12-year-old actress in the same clothes). We learn that Thulin’s character, Rakel, descended into alcoholism, perhaps as a result of her treatment by Vogler, and was eventually cast aside by him. She is desperate and distraught in the dream/fantasy/reminiscence. Returning to Anna, it becomes clearer that she is potentially angling for her own affair with the director (clearly 30 or 40 years her senior). This provides Bergman with the opportunity to reflect on his past behaviour, to offer a suggestion about how he might act now, and above all to reflect on the context of the theatre and how it helps to create a fantasy world for actors who subsequently cannot separate play-acting from the real thing.