Load of rubbish!!

Blistering performances.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Dr. Jenny Isaakson (Liv Ullman) is a Swedish psychiatrist who specializes in treating the mentally ill. But Jenny finds her own sanity in question, as she starts to fall into a midlife depression. After a failed suicide attempt, Jenny has hallucinatory dreams where she is haunted by her psyche (her deceased parents, her loving grandparents, her patients, etc.) It's left in question whether or not she fully recovers from this. Ullman gives a powerful performance in a serious drama about mental illness. Bergman directs well, with long takes and occasional split-screen imagery. But this isn't a feel-good movie that you want to see more than once.

Swedish screenwriter, playwright, producer and director Ingmar Bergman's 37th feature film which he wrote, premiered in USA and was screened Out of competition at the 29th Cannes International Film Festival in 1976. It was shot on locations in Stockholm, Sweden and is a Swedish production which was produced by Swedish production manager and film producer Lars-Owe Carlberg (1923-1988). It tells the story about Jenny Isaksson, a psychiatrist who moves in with her grandparents in the locality of Bollnäs, Sweden after getting a temporary job as a psychiatrist at a psychiatric clinic. While her husband Erik is at a conference in Chicago and her 14-year-old daughter Anna on a horse camp, Jenny goes to a party held by her colleague Hermuth Wankel's wife Elisabeth. There she meets a doctor named Tomas Jacobi who turns out to be her patient Maria's half-brother. Jenny and Tomas starts seeing one another and becomes friends, but all of the sudden Jenny begins to have nightmares that lead her into a trauma.Distinctly and acutely directed by Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, this finely paced fictional tale which is narrated from the main character's point of view, draws a pervasive and involving portrayal of a woman's relationship with a doctor and her struggle with coming to terms with her childhood and maintaining her sanity while being tormented by unsettling dreams. While notable for it's colorful and interior milieu depictions, stellar production design by Swedish production designer Anne Terselius-Hagegård and film producer Peter Kropénin, cinematography by cinematographer Sven Nykvist, editing by Swedish film editor Siv Lundgren, use of sound, use of colors and the music by Estonian-born Swedish concert pianist Käbi Laretei, this character-driven, narrative-driven, existentialistic and at times severe story about an emotionally scarred mother and wife who goes face to face with herself, depicts a multifaceted study of character.This at times atmospheric, somewhat surreal and in-depth psychological chamber drama from the latter part of Ingmar Bergman's career, is impelled and reinforced by it's cogent narrative structure, interrelating stories, substantial character development, the versatile and dedicated acting performance by Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann who gained her second Academy Award nomination for this role, the subtle acting performance by Swedish writer and actor Erland Josephson (1923-2012) and the fine supporting acting performances by Swedish actress Sif Ruud (1916-2011) and Swedish actress Aino Taube (1912-1990). A scrutinizing and afflicting modernist character piece which gained, among other awards, the NYFCC Award for Best Actress Liv Ullmann at the 42nd New York Film Critics Circle Awards in 1977, the NBR Award for Best Actress Liv Ullmann and Best Foreign Film at the 49th National Board of Review Awards in 1977 and the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 34th Golden Globe Awards in 1976.

There are lots of truly great filmmakers in cinema history. Great films have been made everywhere in the world in the last 115 years. But true masters who fundamentally influenced and changed cinema are but a few, relatively speaking. Of course it first started with the 'fathers'. The people who participated in the birth of cinema, and help build cinema from the foundation up in early 1900, like D.W. Griffith in the United States, Giovanni Pastrone in Italy. And then in the 1920s filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein in Russia, F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang in Germany, Alfred Hitchcock in England, Cecil B. DeMille and King Vidor in the United States. Then in the 30s cinema had surpassed it's 'birth' stage, and was starting to evolve; grow. The format, the language and technique of a film were set and familiar. We knew what 'a movie' was, so now let's make them better and better. The final essential evolution was sound. From this point on the form was ripe. That's when the true masters of cinema slowly started to appear.Hitchcock is one of the most unique ones of the true masters, since he also was one of the fathers of cinema. He started in the mid 20s all the way up to 1976..! There are few to none other masters that can claim to have a number of classics in every decade from the 20s up to the 70s. But there are more, and even more interesting masters in cinema. People like Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman and Jean-Luc Godard seem to be regarded as the greatest masters in general. Next to Kubrick, my favorite in this group is Ingmar Bergman.The cinema of Ingmar Bergman consists of films about people... struggling. Bergman is famous - and infamous - for his so called 'depressive movies'. But, for me it's so obvious and essential that they're not depressive at all. They depict the darkest and bleakest themes and subjects, but Bergman films are often very hopeful in the end. Lots of characters in his films are depressed; or struggling with anxiety and fear, sure. But depression is never his main goal. Bergman depicts, disassembles, analyzes and explores the human psyche. The soul. Meaning. And always in/near the context of the greatest existential concepts and ideas. The meaning of life might be rooted in emptiness in his work, but it's what we as humans do with life and ourselves that creates the existence of beauty, love and spiritual connection (which is my personal vision as well). Bergman is masterful in creating the most beautiful moods ever made in cinema. His films sometimes feel like the wind; sometimes like a mirror burning with fire; sometimes like an angry clown. But he touches you, from deep within."Ansikte mot ansikte" (aka "Face to face") is a film about Jenny (played by Liv Ullman). Jenny is a psychiatrist who is confronted with one of her deeply disturbed but tragically endearing patients called Maria. A woman lost in an erotic spell of insanity and troubled thoughts. A mystery. As the film progresses Jenny slowly but surely seems to go in the same direction as the enigmatic Maria. We learn about her inner-demons and outher-troubles as she falls into the abyss of the human psyche. When she 'breaks' in the centre of the film, the film goes inwards - we experience her world of troubling thoughts and experiences in a beautifully confusing dreamlike innervision (think "Lost Highway" without the modern/pop element). In the end it all turns out to be...This was the one Bergman film I had yet to see for a long time. Brilliant and beautiful!

In this harrowing film about the mental collapse of a psychiatrist, Bergman shows exactly why he is a master film maker/director. He dissects Jenny's breakdown with such precision, from the meeting with her grandmother to her eventual complete crash into insanity, it is difficult not to be wrenched into the film. The acuteness of Jenny's anxiety and fears grow steadily and continuously as the film moves along and you have no choice to feel it too. The choice of music also exacerbates that feeling of impending disintegration of Jenny's mind. Liv Ullman who plays Jenny does an awesome job in this rather ironic role of the shrink who is slowly but surely losing her own mind. This may be a slow moving film for some, but this is exactly why this movie is done so well. It is a definite watch.