Loving Couples (1964)
July 17, 2024 11:36 AM - Subscribe
Three expectant mothers think back over their sex lives.
As three pregnant women wait to have their babies in a hospital in Stockholm at the outbreak of the Great War, they relive their childhood and youthful experiences.
Katusha Jin: The film is scattered with sexist remarks and bold opinions on marriage. One of the exchanges between two men very early on is about how men are tied to women by umbilical cords, which feeds a man’s vanity, but strangles a man’s independence. There are also comments about how marriage with a woman is 30 years of torture for 30 seconds of pleasure. These two are from men, but as each woman’s past is revealed, we see that the women don’t shy away from being blunt about their views on marriage and relationships with men either. In fact, there is very little holding back in this film at all—lesbian relationships develop at a girls’ boarding school, affairs and sexual encounters are happening left, right, and center.
But where does this leave the audience? As I grappled with all the different storylines and the many messages in this 117-minute feature, it eventually pointed me towards asking what Zetterling wanted to do with her film. In this intimate and emotional drama, Zetterling presents both commentary and questions on women’s role in a society that was trying to find a new structure to blend its traditional ways with its progressive views. Alongside a team of talented actors, Director Zetterling made her mark with Loving Couples because it showed a point where women’s experiences were not just a decorative feature of a story, instead they formed parts of the identities of its lead characters.
A.h. Weiler: In focusing on extramarital unorthodoxy among the castes, Miss Zetterling has elicited a variety of solid portrayals that redound to the credit of the Swedish acting varsity she has employed. Included among them are the performances of Gunnel Lindbolm, as the love-hungry, frustrated servant who detests the child she has conceived; Gio Petre, as the beautiful Angela, who wants her illegitimate offspring despite the knowledge that she can never again be with the father she loves; Anita Bjork, as her aunt, who is satisfied to "share" that child with her niece; Gunnar Bjornstrand, as the cynical obstetrician; Miss Andersson, who was seduced in childhood, but who has come to savor sex, and Jan Malmsjo, the artist, who accepts a fee for marrying her as cheerfully as he makes quips.The photography, especially in sylvan surroundings, is a decided attribute, even if the film's mood is somber. Miss Zetterling has stacked her pathos; fears and drama largely in favor of the ladies. And, she obviously has succeeded in shocking us now and again in a convoluted saga that doesn't need all those full explanations. But she has come up with an arresting, serious drama that proves she knows the directorial craft and is a welcome addition to it.
Dennis Grunes: Loving Couples, it turns out, is utterly fascinating, amazingly empathetic towards its female characters in a maternity ward that doubles (metaphorically speaking) as an insane asylum, and just wonderful in its seamless interweaving of present and reverie. The Swedish film is highly Bergmanesque, what with Sven Nykvist’s black-and-white cinematography (stencil gray indoors, beauteous outdoors in Nature), and with Harriet Andersson, Gunnel Lindblom, Gunnar Björnstrand, Eva Dahlbeck, Anita Björk, Jan Malmsjö, Ake Grönberg and others onboard. But that coldness of Bergman’s is absent, and Zetterling’s use of the camera is far more relaxed, given to sustained pans, for example, not chiseled, sculptured. Zetterling’s shots are claustrophobic only when she wants them to be.
One may rue the compromise that a false ending applies to the material, but the film’s sensitivity to homosexuality and lesbianism refreshes. Bergman, too, essays the theme of the conventional straightjacket that society readies for girls and women, but Zetterling, unlike Bergman, balances this with another motive: female solidarity. I was unsentimentally moved to tears by passages of this film; this has never happened to me while watching a Bergman film.
Trailer
As three pregnant women wait to have their babies in a hospital in Stockholm at the outbreak of the Great War, they relive their childhood and youthful experiences.
Katusha Jin: The film is scattered with sexist remarks and bold opinions on marriage. One of the exchanges between two men very early on is about how men are tied to women by umbilical cords, which feeds a man’s vanity, but strangles a man’s independence. There are also comments about how marriage with a woman is 30 years of torture for 30 seconds of pleasure. These two are from men, but as each woman’s past is revealed, we see that the women don’t shy away from being blunt about their views on marriage and relationships with men either. In fact, there is very little holding back in this film at all—lesbian relationships develop at a girls’ boarding school, affairs and sexual encounters are happening left, right, and center.
But where does this leave the audience? As I grappled with all the different storylines and the many messages in this 117-minute feature, it eventually pointed me towards asking what Zetterling wanted to do with her film. In this intimate and emotional drama, Zetterling presents both commentary and questions on women’s role in a society that was trying to find a new structure to blend its traditional ways with its progressive views. Alongside a team of talented actors, Director Zetterling made her mark with Loving Couples because it showed a point where women’s experiences were not just a decorative feature of a story, instead they formed parts of the identities of its lead characters.
A.h. Weiler: In focusing on extramarital unorthodoxy among the castes, Miss Zetterling has elicited a variety of solid portrayals that redound to the credit of the Swedish acting varsity she has employed. Included among them are the performances of Gunnel Lindbolm, as the love-hungry, frustrated servant who detests the child she has conceived; Gio Petre, as the beautiful Angela, who wants her illegitimate offspring despite the knowledge that she can never again be with the father she loves; Anita Bjork, as her aunt, who is satisfied to "share" that child with her niece; Gunnar Bjornstrand, as the cynical obstetrician; Miss Andersson, who was seduced in childhood, but who has come to savor sex, and Jan Malmsjo, the artist, who accepts a fee for marrying her as cheerfully as he makes quips.The photography, especially in sylvan surroundings, is a decided attribute, even if the film's mood is somber. Miss Zetterling has stacked her pathos; fears and drama largely in favor of the ladies. And, she obviously has succeeded in shocking us now and again in a convoluted saga that doesn't need all those full explanations. But she has come up with an arresting, serious drama that proves she knows the directorial craft and is a welcome addition to it.
Dennis Grunes: Loving Couples, it turns out, is utterly fascinating, amazingly empathetic towards its female characters in a maternity ward that doubles (metaphorically speaking) as an insane asylum, and just wonderful in its seamless interweaving of present and reverie. The Swedish film is highly Bergmanesque, what with Sven Nykvist’s black-and-white cinematography (stencil gray indoors, beauteous outdoors in Nature), and with Harriet Andersson, Gunnel Lindblom, Gunnar Björnstrand, Eva Dahlbeck, Anita Björk, Jan Malmsjö, Ake Grönberg and others onboard. But that coldness of Bergman’s is absent, and Zetterling’s use of the camera is far more relaxed, given to sustained pans, for example, not chiseled, sculptured. Zetterling’s shots are claustrophobic only when she wants them to be.
One may rue the compromise that a false ending applies to the material, but the film’s sensitivity to homosexuality and lesbianism refreshes. Bergman, too, essays the theme of the conventional straightjacket that society readies for girls and women, but Zetterling, unlike Bergman, balances this with another motive: female solidarity. I was unsentimentally moved to tears by passages of this film; this has never happened to me while watching a Bergman film.
Trailer
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posted by Carillon at 11:40 AM on July 17