What this film really means, I'm afraid, is that Ingmar Bergman has finally cracked the last culture that seemed immune to his "interior of the mind" euro-brechtian influence. This is a pretentious Euro art movie about "LOSS," that catch-all of the continental film sensibility and indeed, high bourgeois culture of all kinds. It is exquisitely filmed and evocative but it is ultimately about self conscious camera placement and people gazing out windows while rubbing significant objects against their cheeks. That the objects happen to be ancient Chinese broadswords, helps, but does not disguise the lack of emotional impact that defines this style of filmmaking. Blech!

[Reviewed by Cynthia Rhae Woodard Perry]