Dreams

Engrained obsession compulsively guides the immediate actions of a career model, who desperately yearns to be with her beloved who cast her aside to be with his wife.

Day after day she interminably imagines a breathtaking return to the way it was, her thoughts ceaselessly revolving around their carefree intimate improvised time together. 

Another model suddenly breaks up with her devoted charming spry young lover, after he plans a lavish picnic and she stubbornly refuses to play sick and join him.

While waiting for work to begin another man takes keenest note, and with bottomless resources at his disposal he buys her ostentatious gifts.

Alas, his daughter interrupts them after she tries her new dress on, having just visited her insane mother who still believes she was born half wolf.

Meanwhile, the sought after husband agrees to meet his former mistress, at the same hotel and in the same room they used to share back in the day.

But his suspicious wife soon comes a' calling with sober advice to cast on the affair. 

As awkward tension superlatively stagnates. 

An otherwise longed for stately reunion.

With blunt prolonged exploratory depth Ingmar Bergman flirts with betrayal and loyalty, Dreams (Kvinnodröm) emancipating cloistered reveries with tormenting frank expedient disclosures. 

She finally possesses her love once more the compelling subject of her mad desire, only to confront the austere obstacle cruelly stomping their coupling to dust. 

In a heartbeat, she has everything she wants and looks incredible in her dress and (Canadian) river pearls, only to be confronted by proud class prejudice with its inherent hatreds and dismissive candour. 

I don't even know how seriously people take their marriages these days, having lost touch with the people I used to know, mostly due to the fact that they got married (single for life), and seemed to have more or less stuck with it.

Marriage and relationships were no doubt integral to Bergman's audience way back when this was filmed however.

Or they were integral to what was permitted to be showcased on film.

Through censorial flux and critical liberation.