So here’s another Ingmar Bergman movie — shocking, right? This one follows two main female characters; one of them owns a fashion photography company, and the other is a model at that company.

The movie is about their relationships with men, and how that relates to their careers; and to some extent, it’s about what women will settle for, because if ol’ Ingmar is portraying the midcentury accurately, it wasn’t a great time for women relationship-wise.

The older woman had a lover in the past, and fell in love with him while he… um, I forget if they broke up and then later he got married, or if he’d already been married and then broke it off with her and stayed married. I’m pretty sure it’s the latter, but either way, he’s definitely married now and their relationship is definitely over. But she finds a pretext to visit his town by scheduling a photo shoot there, and basically stalks him — showing up at his house, calling him at work, etc. He tries to put her off, but eventually agrees to meet her. When they meet in her hotel room, he starts off telling her that it’s over and she should quit calling… but one thing leads to another and they sleep together again, and start making plans to see each other in the future, and she’s all like: relationship rekindled, yahtzee.

BUT THEN his wife comes to the hotel; she’d seen the woman lurking around her house, and knew they’d end up at the hotel. She curtly orders her husband to come home, and then just dissects this woman and her husband, delivering an absolutely eviscerating speech that cuts right through her illusions and his excuses and makes it clear to both of them what a sad little situation they have, and… yeah, that’s done with now, it’s clear that this affair is definitely not a thing anymore. He abashedly trundles off to go home, and she is crying it out, clearly mad at herself for having been such a fool.

Except then, in a really knife-twisting little coda, he comes back to the hotel room, and she just lights up, all excited, like: You left her? You came back for me? You really love me? But no, he just left his hat and came back to grab it, he is one hundred percent staying with his wife. Oof.

In parallel, we have the model’s story. She got pulled off on this short notice trip for this photo shoot, and her boyfriend is pissed about it, because — frankly — he’s a selfish asshole. They have an emotional fight, the kind where things are thrown, and they break up.

And so she’s off on this photo shoot, newly single and feeling sad for herself, when a distinguished older gentleman sees her looking at a dress in a window and offers to buy it for her. She’s like “um, no, creepazoid,” but he’s suave and persuasive and convinces her that he just wants to make her day a little brighter with no strings attached. She eventually gives in, and oh hey the dress will be delivered to his house once it’s done being tailored, hmmmmmm.

She’s kind of skeptical of this whole thing, but anyway realizes that this shopping trip has made her late for the shoot, so she takes off to it… but it’s too late, they’ve canceled it for the day, and the older woman (who is, as we see above, going through her own stuff) fires her in pique.

Distraught, the model goes back into town and bumps into the older man again, who consoles her with some chocolate at her request, and then also buys her a pearl necklace. And when he asks her what she wants most of all, it’s to go ride a roller coaster, so he takes her to the amusement park (which, it is implied, is closed down and opens just for him; he is a genuinely wealthy and important person).

This is maybe the most hilarious part of the movie, because she’s just excitedly going on ride after ride, and you can see him realizing with some nausea and exhaustion that perhaps he has made a mistake here, and that perhaps there’s a reason why young people don’t usually end up dating much older people.

But eventually they leave the amusement park and head to his house. The dress has been delivered, so she puts it on, along with the fancy necklace. They have some champagne, and you can tell that he has won her over with these grand gestures. They’re having a romantic and seductive time of things… except she gets a little too drunk, and she puts on some boisterous music, and is jumping on the couch, and is burbling on about all the other things he could buy her, and you can again see him realizing that perhaps this is not a path to happiness.

But… y’know, they’re here, and she’s hot, and even if she’s a little uncouth, might as well get to the point of this whole day-long extravagant seduction, right? And so they’re on a pathway to sex when the man’s daughter — who is about the model’s age — unexpectedly shows up. She quarrels with her father, and when she realizes that the model is there (he had hidden her away in a side room when the daughter appeared), the daughter confronts her, calls the model a whore in as many words, and shames her dad too, before flouncing off.

This puts a damper on the mood, and the model puts her own clothes back on, and slinks out, abashed.

And this is the exciting trip that our two women had; when they meet back up to go back to their home city, the model starts crying and spills her story, the owner feels an obvious kind of relatability to it, they commiserate about how difficult it is to have relationships while also having careers, and hey, she’s unfired, so that’s something.

And then the “happy ending” is that when they get back in town, the older woman arranges for the girl’s boyfriend to come to the studio, and the two of them make up and get back together, and hooray, now she can get married to this horrid man and they can live happily ever after, while the older woman will die a spinster. Romance, whoo!

This is apparently not a particularly well-received film from Bergman, but I honestly think it’s kinda underrated. The bleak, matter-of-fact ways that it cuts through illusions and leaves these women in an objectively grim place relationship-wise are bracing, and the portrayal of the men in these relationships is incisive. If this had a female director attached to it, I suspect you’d see it referred to as an early but important feminist work, and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised to see it get a re-appraisal at some point on those grounds. It’s not one of Bergman’s masterpiece movies, to be sure, but I think I’d put it above the two summer movies I just watched.