#finally an excuse to spoil Max beyond casual

[evakaname]

“I take it this is why the Inquisitor is still practically blockaded in the war room?” “And you haven’t even seen all the stuff that went up there...”

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Happy Birthday to @sakurabunnie ‘s Maxwell, aka best boi who deserves nice things.

[mustyrosewater]

𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙥𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙗𝙤𝙮𝙨 . . .

@leatherjacketmazzello​ requested what going clothes shopping with the pedro boys is like!

so lets go !! 

warnings : mentions of lingerie, mentions of sex.

javier pena : 

i’m not gonna lie to you, i kind of feel like javi wouldn’t be all that up to the idea of going clothes shopping with you at first. he has better things to do with his time rather than help you pick out clothes, that’s at least what he says until you casually mention you might be trying on some bra’s as well. 

our boy gets up very quickly and is already in the car by the time you grab your purse. the process of actually finding something to try on his boring for him at first; he has no idea how womens clothes work, this man only ever goes shopping if he has literally nothing else to wear or if his jeans are beyond repair. this along with the fact that he normally just picks a pair, gets the size and leaves. i don’t think the concept of actually trying on clothes before you buy them is actually in his brain. 

it’s not until you drag him along with you to the change rooms with a little white sundress with cute sunflower patterns all over it hung over your arm and tell him to wait while you try it. he ends up sat on a stool with his arms crossed as he impatiently waits for you. the ladies working at the change rooms have a little giggle and crack a few jokes with him while he waits.

it’s not until he hears the curtain draw back and lazily turns his head to you, only to nearly choke on his own saliva when he sees you grinning at him happily and do a little spin to show it off.

this man nearly gets a semi then and there. 

next thing you know javi is picking out several more things to try on, so much so that you need to remind him you still need to try on bra’s. 

he is very, very motivated to help you pick something out. 

francisco “catfish” morales : 

we know our boy is a sweetheart™ so even if he doesn’t have the best of idea of how shopping for women’s clothes works, you best believe he is going to happily drive with you to the mall to at least try and help. 

everytime you hold something up and ask him what he thinks he just holds his hands in his pockets and shrugs. it’s not that he doesn’t care, it’s just that to him everything looks beautiful on you so it doesn’t really matter. 

when you finally pick out a few items and bring him with you to the change rooms, you decide to just let him go in with you because we know he’s seen you naked countless times, neither of you really care at this point and there was nobody actually in the change rooms at the time so why not? 

he’s not really paying the m o s t attention because while he loves you, he’s only human, this man will check his phone every now and then. 

h o w e v e r, he looks up just in time to see you pulling on a pair of jean shorts and he’d be lying if watching you do a little shimmy while pulling them over the curse of your ass and turning in the mirror to check them out.

the moment you turn to him and asks him what he thinks his eyes are slightly widened and the man looks absolutely hypnotized. it’s not hard for you to realize that those jean shorts are most definitely a solid yes. 

shane “dio” morrisey : 

i feel like you and dio would get your clothes at pretty similar places, so whenever you want to go shopping it’s an invitation for him to come along and grab a few things for himself as well. this is despite the fact that literally every single time you two go shopping, it turns into dio taking you into practically every lingerie shop he can find and getting you to try things on for him. 

we’re not gonna sit here and act like you guys don’t shoplift ok, this man does not have a job, he is not paying for any of this. 

he’s usually more enthusiastic about picking things out for you, purely because he loves to see you try on things that he thinks would look good on you, lots of skirts and such. 

he wouldn’t force you to get something if you didn’t like it, but he’d definitely reassure you that if you change your mind he’s still putting it in his bag. 

i feel like he’d love to pick out chokers for you to try as well?

yes, you two go into a sexy shop, yes you come out with some very interesting purchases in terms of what some would consider ‘clothes.’ 

oberyn martell : 

well i mean, this man is a prince, if you even mention that you’re thinking about going down to the market to look for some more gowns, he can and will send you a plethora of new items. 

you told him you were fine with just going to the market and picking out a few simple things. did he listen? no. you know for a fact that some of these dresses come from the finest tailors in westeros.

at first you don’t want to accept it, it’s too much, but oberyn reassures you that you deserve them, and that only the most beautiful of gowns are allowed to grace your ethereal body. 

you know for a fact that he only wants you to try them on in front of him so that he can take them off of you, one of his favorites thing to do is know that you’re wearing something that he got for you, almost like he’s wrapping his own present in beautiful silks and embroidered velvet dresses. 

there was only one time the two of you actually went down to the market and every single time you tried something on he would shake his head slowly and tell you that whatever you were trying on was not worthy of your beauty and that you just need to let him order in dresses that are truly worthy enough of such a goddess. 

din djarin : 

ok look, our boy mando knows next to nothing about womens clothing, but armor? that our boy knows, he will absolutely take you to the markets and help you pick out armor that is worth the credits as well as making sure you aren’t paying more than it’s worth. 

i’m not gonna lie our boy would be absolutely hopeless at helping you go clothes shopping and thats ok, it’s not like he ever thought he would be doing that, he is a bounty hunter after all. 

there was only a single time that you were out looking for a bounty and came across a small market, curiosity getting the better of you, you went and had a look, thinking that maybe you could find something to bring back for the kid, a new toy or something. 

you didn’t mean to buy the dress, it was just the fact that as you picked it up, you could tell that din was staring at you intensely through his helmet, and part of you just knew he was imagining what you would look like in the dress.

of course it found it’s way into your bag all for the purpose of surprising him later on.

maxwell lord : 

the second that you mention your plans to go out shopping for a few new bits and pieces, maxwell is immediately standing up from his desk and informing his secretary that the two of you were going out. 

he gets the two of you in a car and next thing you know you’re pulling up outside of chanel, looking over at maxwell with furrowed brows. he just looks at you like it’s the most normal thing in the world to go to chanel for ‘bits and pieces.’

you try to assure him that he doesn’t have to take you here but he just brushes whatever protests you give off and takes you inside, unable to hide a chuckle when he see’s you looking around the store in awe, marveling at the chandelier and perfectly pressed white fluffy carpets. 

he tells you to start looking around and tells you to let him know if you see something you like. you look at him like he’s crazy but none the less begin to nervously walk around the store, tilting your head at the overdressed mannequins put into outfits that must cost more than your car and rent combined. 

as soon as you look at something for more than five seconds, maxwell asks if you like it or if you want to try it on. to be honest, shopping with maxwell is kind of a nightmare purely because you can’t help but feel like the workers will think this is some kind of sugar daddy relationship and that you’re just with maxwell for his money. maxwell assures you that they don’t get paid enough to care. 

max phillips : 

while max isn’t exactly loaded, we know he’s a frat boy that’s come from a trust fund family so he definitely isn’t middle class by any means. 

so expect that when you tell max that you’re thinking of going out to get some new clothes he takes you to ralph lauren of all places; this is a man who wears tailored suits and always has his rolex on, he is going to spoil you at least a little bit. 

even if you have concerns about people thinking you’re a gold digger, he assures you that he knows you love him and that’s the only opinion that you should really care about. 

and yes, when you get home he expects you to model everything he bought you, especially any and all expensive lingerie.

jack daniels a.k.a agent whiskey : 

when it comes to our southern boy, he has simple taste at heart. so when you say that you were thinking of getting some new clothes, he absolutely wants to go with you purely because he wants to help you as well as having the opportunity to shower you with compliments. 

he knows your taste extremely well and is very good at picking out things that he knows you’ll both really like. 

however, it doesn’t matter what you try on, because every single time without failure it’s going to result in you showing it to him for his opinion and in turn having him look you up and down, let out a low whistle and tell you that “well, you look as pretty as a peach, good enough to eat.” or some variation of his classic southern charm. 

at the end of the day he’s happy if you’re happy, he’s probably never going to get sick of shopping trips if it means it’s just an excuse to oogle at you and compliment you every five minutes. 

pero tovar : 

i think he’s more surprised than anything when you say you want to go to the market for something other than armor or weapons. he’s never seen you in anything other than armor or sleepwear so the idea of you wearing anything else is a completely new concept to him. he’s lying if he says he isn’t at least curious.

at first he’s a bit overwhelmed by the dresses that you’re looking at, especially when it comes to all the fancy words the sellers are saying. ‘embroidered’ ‘hand stitched’ he doesn’t know what they mean but he learns that they’re good things at least? he’s definitely not trying to remember the words so that if he ever wants to surprise you with anything he’ll know what to ask for. 

he almost freezes when you turn to him holding up a dress and asking him what he thinks, we all know that he doesn’t know enough to have a good opinion on the dress itself, and any opportunity to get you into something pretty is a yes for him, he simply shrugs and lets out a small grunt. 

he’s thankful for the market trip later on when he actually gets to see you in the dress later on, especially when he gets to tear it off of you. 

dave york : 

a majority of the time dave is far too busy to actually go shopping with you, but the second he gets some time off you are dragging that man to a store with you to pick out some clothes. he doesn’t necessarily have very interesting opinions of what you hold up from the rack, once again coming back to the whole idea of you looking gorgeous in whatever you wear. 

things do get interesting when you get to lingerie however, if he had ears, they would perk up at the mention of it. 

yes, he wants you to try things on. yes, if you like it he’ll be the one buying it for you because he wants to see you wearing lingerie he knows he paid for. 

also he absolutely tries to spew some bullshit he’s heard from chick flicks about how ‘that cardigan matches goes with your eye color.’ okay dave, you get an a for effort at least? 

[ratherhavetheblues]

INGMAR BERGMAN’S ‘A LESSON IN LOVE’ “What do you do?”

© 2020 by James Clark

The film we’re about to come to grips with, namely, Ingmar Bergman’s, A Lesson in Love (1954), has by all and sundry, maintained that its action amounts to  be a “comedy”—a whimsical romance confirming a matrimonial imperative. That would be a validation of mainstream life.  Where, pray, comes the idea that Bergman strives for such an outcome? I think I know.

A Hollywood film, from 1940, namely, His Girl Friday, under the auspices of Howard Hawks, a figure nearly as talented as Bergman (though nowhere near as profound), became a “screwball classic” for an era needing some laughs. It had to do with an ex-wife still tangled up with her newspaper editor, being so adept and delighted with the work as to be indispensable. Notwithstanding, she’s about to remarry and leave the job, a prospect the boss can’t contemplate. The ensuing skirmishing, between the incomparable, Cary Grant, and likewise, Rosalind Russell, are an epiphany of old-time, rapid-wit and cynicism. With their barrels of charm, they end up staying together, and the customers applaud with gusto.

Had the customers, of Bergman’s film here, taken a look at the three preceding Bergman films, they might have curbed their zeal about A Lesson in Love being an effort to live up to Hawks’ His Girl Friday. The newshounds are already in their heaven of advantage. Hawks was as flush an adjusted giant as Bergman was as flush a maladjusted giant. (A bit closer, though, to our helmsman, was Howard Hughes!) Though Hawks was, in addition, a daring sportsman, for sure, he would not have wanted any part of the rigors which Bergman faced all his life. As such, Bergman assembles an action with many formal aspects of the 1940 film, but only to display how very different such domestic conflict can careen into long-term emptiness. Gunner Bjornstrand and Eva Dahlbeck, though handsome enough, are not built for swooning, but instead for bloodless self-mutilation. Once in a while a bit of mirth escapes, but only to emphasize the loss of real sustenance. (This seems to be the moment to take to heart how badly served the commentary of Bergman films through the years have been left. A few ridiculously overrated pundits have managed to disfigure the work beyond recognition, to be followed by the quick and the dead. One of the more egregious and destructive faux pas along this slope is the daft reflex to the assumption that early works [like the one here] are minor and dispensable. Bergman was ready to shoot out all the lights from the outset. A Lesson in Love is as brilliant and indispensable as Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal and Persona.)

     This is a vehicle with many flashbacks during a train ride to Copenhagen, where Marianne, telling David, for the umpteenth time, “I’m not for you, my man,” induces in both of them a reverie of 15 years before and the irony of their wedding there. (We begin here—about the mid-point of the narrative—to absorb the harsh measures being promulgated, measures that strikingly distance the Hawks’ comedy.) Pushing off, one of them brags, “We were like The Three Musketeers… [rich killers with an excuse]. From that fanfare, the missing of Marianne on her wedding day (to sculptor, Carl-Adam) leads out to a stream of casual contempt. At the wedding ceremony underway, Carl-Adam tasks David with finding the bride. Finding, as he knew where she would be, namely still in bed, David becomes a lightning rod to the young girl’s faulty decisiveness. The groom had prefaced the confusion with, “She needs to reflect, analyze the past, say good bye to virginity” [all laughing about that, even the pastor]. Adam chugged down something strong—“You’re supposed to be calming me down”—and turned to David with, “My only friend, can you pick up the car and console her if she needs? I know you exert a tranquillizing influence.” (Behind the two searchers, one of the revelers wore a black and white dress with chevron patterns which no one knew what to do with.)  On waking Marianne at Adam’s pad, David discovers that she’d rather marry him. The seriality of the handrails up to the door had not created the sensation it could have. Nor did the Hollywood wind motif, up to the door. But entering, he saw a noose hanging from a light fixture, which gave him a start. When the patrician youngsters are eye-to-eye, Marianne’s eyes are crying. Between there and the feeble bid to use the noose, she deflects David’s scorn—“ What are you saying? The wedding has already begun!”—with , “I wanna die… If you’re going to scold me, you better go.” Followed by, “Can’t I be tired of him, the buffalo?” She cites how handsome David looked on blushing when he saw Adam using her as a nude model. And she adds, “Carl-Adam, the buffalo, laughed and said, ‘He’s [David’s] going to be a gynecologist!’” And finally, she crafts an intimate history of his tracking down an ant in her pants, eliciting from the budding gynecologist, “I’m still ashamed to think of that… ant.” And when she can’t seem to swing David along with her, she pulls down the plaster, saying, “I’d rather hang myself.”

   But eventually they do see themselves becoming married (an early Millennial marriage), and rush off to announce the eleventh-hour nuptials. (Not before, however, her declaring, “I’ve loved you for over two years!” And not before David’s deadpan, “We need to talk with Carl-Adam…” [in one of their patented seepage of manufacturing “important information”]. Now, for a bit of spice, she adds, “He’s gonna kill you!” And he adds, “Rightly so. We’re best friends.” And this becomes the origin of a 15-year marriage, with two children. (A few years later, Bergman will return to discern more rotten rich pussies, in his Scenes from a Marriage [1974], replete with another Marianne.) David resists her wanting to make love at this moment, and she praises, “What a strong personality!”—the ways of subterfuge spinning crazily.

Entering the reception to cheers, here screwball shows us something far darker than the resources of Howard Hawks. It involves an effete fraternity. David pipes up, “Dear Carl-Adam, I can’t tell you how annoying it is coming here to spoil your wedding. It’s doubly painful that we are best friends…”  Marianne, cutting to the chase, looks for bloody tidings, with, “But we love each other… David and me.” Adam, burly, but far from proletarian, having embarked on an invisible cash-flow and an endless supply of alcohol, laughs a zany laugh, as if someone else has been stiffed (or, as if the contretemps has shot up an instable disinterestedness). The moment provides the once-groom handing over a fine beverage to the traitors. “Let’s toast the new bride and groom! My sincere congratulations!” (This angers Marianne, who had been born to be a princess, never to be fast food, nor to be less than a centre of the universe, carrying a world-wide anxiety about those not endlessly in awe of her supposed prestige and power.) A laugh comes from the artiste. Then, to David, “You’re afraid, you dog!”/ “I can’t deny it,” is the new family man’s response. The sometimes-ugly drunk chooses, “A healthy little man, very surprised…” His smile—now a stage smile—clicks into a murderous register, and he smashes David into unconsciousness. The aggrieved tells her, “Witch!” But Marianne, who in another era would be a leader of a counter-revolution, easily avoids his haymaker. She tells him, being a paragon of convenient correctness, “Are you going to hit a woman?” Adam, perhaps having some class-time at a law-school (the other Marianne follows in her daddy’s footsteps as a lawyer), tells her, “I’ll get you what you deserve, you bastard!” (One of his savage sculptures is in view for the festivity.) She smacks him in the face. The pastor says, “Peace, my friends, peace.” The born lawyer emotes, “Who was wronged? [Who has the advantage?]. On what side is justice? In my innocence! No?” Marianne objects, “What innocence?” she addresses the divine. “And the sluts he uses as models, vertically and horizontally… like a dirty goat!” “I was going to marry this bitch, pastor! I am a man of peace…” She jumps up on a chair and pulls up her dress to expose a thigh. “Kisses me where the sun does not shine. Can anyone see the bite mark? I told people I got it when I climbed up a tree!” The pastor cries out, “Peace, in the name of God!” Adam rushes to the dock. “I protest! Deceptive propaganda!” She retorts, “You protest? I’ll kick you in the ass! That’s right, your pigs dumpling! … Sorry, pastor…I’ve been a maid to this pretentious genius for three years! ‘Marianne do this, Marianne do that… Sew my socks… This food is bad, make some coffee, kiss me… It is an honor for you to serve me, the greatest sculptor in the world! I talk to Michelangelo…’” When he protests, “I never said that,” she comes back with, “You were drunk! You’ve always been drunk. And on our wedding, too!” He protests, “I was sober when the wedding started—was I not, my friends?” Marianne sneers, “You and your friends have never been sober…” (The friends denounce her.) “I’ve passed your threshold for the last time… And I let you draw my breasts, also for the last time…” (She brandishes her fist in Adam’s face.) “And I shit on your art, your immortality, your ostentatiousness and your unbearable and idiotic virility!” She underlines her oration by smashing a cup. Adam tells, “I am very angry with your imprecation… who took you out of the gutter, who will become famous from his unique art… Lick my… Pardon, pastor… the soles of my boots… I gave you a home, food and drink! I was like a father, all these years! [Clichés to the max.] Marianne, you repay me badly. The world is an ungrateful place…”

   She, momentarily, and dysfunctionally ashamed, says, “I created a snake in my chest.” David has recovered, given another chance to find equilibrium. “Actually two damn snakes,” Adam perseveres. He loses his balance and falls. Marianne’s self-criticism now out the door, she sheiks in vicious laughter. David does not laugh, nor anyone else. A glimpse of viral derangement. On regaining his footing, he finds a gesture to regain some dignity: “Get out of here or I’ll kill you and that good-for-nothing friend of yours!” And he pushes over the piano for high effect, which belies his commitment to dignity. Then Marianne, seemingly taking a course in self-destruction by way of virulent advantage, declares, “I’ll take everything that’s mine.” She races around the centre, grabbing bits of décor, while the other guests regard her as terminally shabby. Adam does nothing helpful in the way of poise, by smashing all her dishes. “I won’t forget that,” she didn’t have to tell us, “you fucking camel!” She equips herself with a club-like utensil and smashes down one of his larger works. Adam begins to overturn a table; but he manages a second thought. He grabs David, but then pushes him away, before any more assault. He approaches Marianne, with hate in his eyes, while her club is on the ready. He spits in her face, and charges… But then he calls out, “A woman, my friends! What a woman!… The party goes on… Hell! The bottles are empty!” David lifts Marianne! She’s beaming, and so is he! She commands, “Don’t just stand there! Come on, pastor…” Marianne lights a candle, and the guests feel they’ve seen the heart of creative depth. (This being, among other rejoinders, Bergman’s challenge to Hawks’ famous expressive vigor.)

Going into this fascinating, early and far from minor film, we are on the hook to discern how Marianne and David (as we rejoin them on the rails for that supposed date with destiny, in the form of Marianne—once again—about to tie the knot with bemusing Adam) fool themselves that theirs has been and will continue to be a rich relationship. Along with this scrutiny of the protagonists, however, there is hovering over it all the question if anyone surpasses their chaos; and, if so, what it looks like. The narrative transpires in one day, as mentioned, with a flurry of flashbacks exposing both of them as self-indulgent mediocrities.

   However, laced within their nausea, there is, as always with Bergman, a motherlode of apparitions piercing, somewhat, the thick-skinned perversity. With the first image, being a music box with a mechanized scenario of a rococo, Era of Reason coquette flitting between two rich men, we are ensnared by essentially obsolete players remaining dominant. This minuet is suddenly shattered by a brief lightning flash, followed by David, having become the gynecologist of his dreams, and being told in his office by an attractive woman patient, “You’re a bastard! You’re spoiled, coarse and technical. And you’ve never understood a woman… You’re extremely naïve…” After feeding her with, “The conjugal bed means the death of love” (wit from the 18th century), he races off to catch that train, having a chauffeur allowing him to doze off and dream about that flirtation he was trying to put in the past. (One very odd vision in that medical facility is his lab-coat—more a trench-coat than an indoor apparel. Then there is the chauffeur, Sam, speaking along lines of Hollywood detective, Sam Spade. Does the “technical” worthy need a supplement of something else? Another of David’s epigrams is, “Perhaps repentance and painful conscience are only Siamese twins” [another nod to something missing]. The impatient woman patient is seen in a chair involving a pattern of delicate parallel lines, hoping for sensation. Try to keep in mind this surprising bid of ragged poetry, from the supposed “technical,” because one of the highlights of this film shows him, very briefly and near the end, to be truly distinguished.)

   The dance of Sam’s windshield wipers lulls him to sleep; but it could also, given the right outlook, be a shot in the arm. “You have nice hands and a very beautiful neck,” David praises. He continues, “I have certain principles with regard to marriage and faithfulness… I have an extremely attractive wife that I sincerely love. I’ve never been unfaithful…” (This after his reminiscence of his kissing another woman in the moonlight, after his wife went to bed.) The mistress, Susanne, tells him, “You have an uncontrollable will to kiss me and that’s not all…” His retort is, “I prefer my life with you to be one of small joys and hassles. I prefer my slippers and the indifferent fire from the fireplace, to a perfumed body, and a completely different fire that is dangerous and suffocates everything we call home, children and decency. And gains absolutely nothing.” (Little does he recognize that the fireplace is not indifferent!) A dream being more candid, he veers into, “I don’t love you, but I have come to touch you and erase my apathy by fire. Let me overcome the garbage in my brain… This was banal, stupid, silly and ridiculous.” She, seeing him making her point, calmly says, “Don’t talk any more, just kiss me.” He begins to kiss her, and then backs off… rattling on, “My cogency is indispensable, however boring.” She smiles, “Think of it as a diversion…” He tells her, “I’m crazy with desire, who wouldn’t agree to it?”/ “I’m still waiting,” the more coherent of the two tells him. “Your wife doesn’t trust you. Fidelity exists if you are faithful… Infidelity is the invention of moralists and gossips.” He seems to need more talk: “If I’m going to hell, you’re the best company.”/ “Men need reasons for everything,” she triumphs. “I dreamed about you at night,” he blurts out. Going farther, he says, “You were like our own child!” Her response? “He’s turning into a poet…” And—of course—they kiss passionately.

  In a coda to that romp, David doses off again during Sam’s trusty navigation—this time elicited by a ripple of light from the highway. (These occurrences, however, could be part of an agency of incisiveness.) This time bodies, not talk, take over, due to a lovely archipelago just beyond Stockholm, also seen in Bergman’s sensual films, Summer Interlude (1951) and Summer with Monika (1953). David and Susanne (the “patient”) drift in his sailboat. “The delicate memories remain. Yes, that summer…” A shimmer from the seas passes over her face (like the “glitches,” in the 1951 film, eliciting mystery and joy). His refusing to go swimming stings her, in her journey toward disinterestedness. “I see, one, two, three, four… stars,” he avers, prosaically, not on the same page. They both admit to be tired. She takes his pipe out of his mouth, and puts it in her mouth. He feels “satiated.” She’s “insatiable.” He declares, “Men cannot vegetate.”/ “You can’t just be,” she complains. “I want to do some research,” he posits. (But research is a wide-ranging notion. A test for both of them.) Her slur, “That’s so minor,” finds her at her worse. He trots out a slur, himself: “Eat, eat, satisfy.” And then she waits for the product, “Hate.” Once again, a shimmer of light from the sea passes over her face and body. Instead of a progression, there is an impasse. “You’re tired of me,” she declares. His, “I didn’t mean that,” is met by, “Yes, that was exactly what you did mean. Don’t try to dodge that.”/ “I could spit! But you’re under my skin… at the tips of my fingers…” She counters with, “I’m a kind of poison…”/ “Call it what you want. Stop smoking my pipe… You leave it filthy.” (She could have turned the tables by saying, “You leave it pedantic.”) She grabs his throat. “I could cut your throat!”/ In a flash, he chirps up, “I’ll show you the quickest way! Put my head on your desk, and use a lamp [emitting no light] to smash me between the eyes.”

   Catching the train was easy. Using the train was not. Such a vehicle happens to be one of Bergman’s means of offering the gifts of dynamics to a sluggish constituency. No longer wearing his eccentric lab coat, David, like a gumshoe, plies the first-class relaxation until he finds Marianne. And here comes one of the film’s “whacky,” “screwball,” and let’s face it, “cynical,” initiatives, face-to-face with His Girl Friday. Seeming to be encountering someone he’d never met before, the droll Carry Grant wannabe obsequiously  addresses his wife, “Is that place occupied?”/ “No, it’s unoccupied,” she reports, not really surprised befalling complicating from an agency who had driven her to the portal of divorce. The supposed classic, harmless pedant, begs her to spare his frail constitution, by moving over to the window seat. “I don’t like  the wind in my face.” In the maneuvering there, he pretends to accidentally sit on her purse. (The ambiguity of David’s powers is a major hot spot to consider.) After the arrangements are finished, the other occupant of the deluxe room, a gregarious gentleman, making a point of never taking a train due to being an avid car driver—whose car is needing repairs—sizes up David as a rather meek intellectual. (The little home away from home, however, is provided with headrests in the form of patterns of two wings spread out, and a central figure therewith of oblique nature. There is something engaging about the pattern, to be sure; but there is also a fascist, military thrust.) The genuine stranger also sizes up Marianne, as one of his type, sophisticated and promiscuous. He fibs being delighted here, without his expensive chariot, telling his audience, “We can meet nice people… and beautiful ladies…” Cut to Marianne, who smiles warmly and then opens a book she was reading before David messed things up. The latter opens his valise and begins to read a formidable-looking book. That brings from the mixer, “A black-cover book, huh. Probably modern literature. Can I ask its title?” It reads, “Introductory Study of the Arterial Circulation and Sexual Glands.” Marianne rolls her eyes in boredom, seeing in the stranger a soulmate. She asks for a light (David’s incursion being more annoying than she realizes). And, Hollywood Lite, the people guy immediately lights her cigarette while David’s lighter refuses to perform. (Like a TV ad. This motif takes off in earnest, in Bergman’s punchy rendition of The Magic Flute [1975].)

   The couple whose wedding was unusual might have been understood, by those not present at the reception,  as merely eccentric. But we have Howard Hawks’ Hildy and Walter, from the era of real screwball, never departing from the aegis of savvy skepticism. They enjoy the cuddle of a virtually universal escapism. With Marianne and David, however, there is an intensity far abrogating even the quirky normal. Their sham of being strangers is actually a truth. She’ll go out of the chic little cabin (regarding David with disdain), to visit the washroom, whereupon the critic of modern literature proposes to the supposed easy mark a bet that she’ll happily kiss him before the trip is over. “What a woman!” he exclaims (the very words that Adam used during that up-and-down wedding). “What posture, what way of walking, what breasts…” David is almost serene, having, in the course of rushing to save their marriage, a strange disinterestedness. Here the dynamics of the ride, seen out the window, show up. “Won’t you be sad left alone?” the rambling gambler asks./ “On the contrary!” David enthuses. Then they both laugh uproariously, for different reasons. The conductor comes in, and by this time David covers his eyes. That visit done, he opens his book, but he doesn’t read. He stares into space. The book falls on the floor. A lesson in love. (The carpet shows a pattern of binary forms, with a gap.) Two photos fall out of the pages, and he’s in a mood to relive, by reverie, an episode pertaining to his daughter, Nix, played by Harriet Andersson, who—talk about “nix”—had only a few months before portrayed the savvy skeptic, Monika, in Bergman’s film, Summer with Monika (1953).

   Of course, the gambler gets his face slapped—a slap coinciding with David’s resumption of trying to make pearl out of swine. (He bets the kissing loser that he, the supposed nerd and nothing else, can kiss the chick. And he wins, though winning with Marianne is hardly winning.) Thus, begins a pell-mell race of our bemusing protagonists performing yet another blind alley. (Nix takes over the memory, with her crusade to never marry, to stay masculine and to resent her parents’ going separate ways. “It’s not healthy for a woman living without a man… [more incoherence]… It’s so disgusting! I pity all women.” They visit an uncle/ potter (everywhere they turn there are estates and the idle rich); but Axel, the artisan, does carry some gentle, if quietist, traction. Moreover, Nix’s noisy rebellion does sustain some sense. “It means that Mom also plays the ‘love game.’” (In a show of ambiguity, she also declares to David, “If you have a new lover, let Mommy have hers.”) Seemingly a level-headed, classical rationalist, the dad advises (with something up his sleeve), “The best of life seems to be a collaboration.” Nix sums up the day, “And you’re a baboon!” After a pause, he replies, “Yes, maybe I am.” She adds, “You despise yourself, Daddy!”/ “Yes, Nix. I despise myself. I see everything being infinitely incoherent…” How lacking in acuity, comes in the follow-up: Nix, unsparing, “So you see Mom, and Pelle [Nix’s brother] and me to be incoherent?”/ “No!” [of course], he rushes to assert. “They’re  the only thing I care about!”

   Now that the voyager finds herself needing more substance and far less fantasy—Marianne, beginning with feigning a bit of grit in her eye (grit being in short supply) which David attends to with some body contact—attempts to fabricate some validity for her folly of linking to an alcoholic idiot. How far had David slipped from the momentary reflection of his past moment with Nix? He tells Marianne, “I’m known for my delicate touch…” She thinks to be on solid grounds by musing, “I’ve always thought of the huge powers that a gynecologist has over our hearts and our confidences.” He brags, “You can lose your head. Sometimes it’s relaxing.”/ “Does his wife also find it relaxing?” she asks. And he snipes back, “She seizes the opportunity to lose her head.” After much more mutual steeling, David shifts to self-criticism. “Aside from reproduction, man is an insignificant player in the world of women… I admit my inferiority without grudge. I just cannot babble…” [a means of surrender including being tops, anyway].

Babbling and embarrassing seem endless, coming from blast-furnace experts of advantage. Let’s see the rare moments of vision, as the action  subsides to spineless retreat. Adam, that easy target, drives Marianne to the epigram, “A grown man is rare, Dear David.” But she spoils it with the loopy arrogance, “A woman chooses the man-child whom she fits best.” He musters, “In the beginning, it was just you and me… A company with a future. [But seeing yourself as cash-flow, therewith, is in fact a form of bankruptcy; however, a ‘company’ may be quite a different action from that.] Our painful experiences can be our start-up capital.”[Painful experiences may veer for good; they may also veer for collapse.] David, bidding for a prolongation of what was already too long, enlists the wrong powers, powers of bathos: “Give me again your heart, and I will treat you like a sacred reliquary.” (His winning kiss is far less than it might seem.)

As Marianne drifts for the second time to leave Adam in the lurch on account of an extended family too big to fail, they, nearing Copenhagen, bring us along in shaky celebration to the birthday of David’s father, only a year before real time. By this time, Marianne routinely puts down booby-traps to spoil, for instance, David’s morning at the palatial homestead. (And, before that, he rudely slaps her ass as a wake-up call.) The grandma, barging into their temporary bedroom and ignoring Marianne, wants it known that the birthday boy—forever the pedant—got up at 3 a.m. to change for the party. But the day does put out some magic. Sam, turning out to be the oldsters’ chauffeur, can’t persuade the ancient limousine to start, and they take their two horses and a cart to attempt to make the day shine. A flute passage jumps up, and the woods are everything the household isn’t. They arrive at a cliff on the seashore, and they scatter at will. The protagonists invade a pristine swatch of saplings touched by a bright sun. Their cigarette smoke-clouds predate vapers. “Do you still love me,” she asks. “That’s a stupid question,” is all she gets. “Imagine that it ends one day…” she continues. “No one’s beautiful like you,” he asserts. And in response, she says, “I’m serious…” The subject of his mistress hovers like bugs. And she, hardly a paragon of stability, emotes, “When you are far from me, only for a day or so, I feel I have become small and sad. And as if everything died around me. Is that weird?” Her jist comes down to, “Let nothing change,” and let’s have another baby… (“Imagine its smell,” she brandishes… “Imagine holding that life… I get creepy talking about it…” All of this futility occurs in close-up, with them reclining in the grass.)

Still in reverie, but productive on the basis of hard-wired outlooks, earlier on that day, while waiting for the car to behave, grandma demands that grandpa return to the house and put on one of his best vests. Nix is ordered to accompany him, and a conversation takes place, a conversation, opened by Nix, which David and Marianne would regard to be “small and sad.” The candid granddaughter asks, “Grampa, are you afraid to die?” His response is, first of all, “No, not at all, I believe in God Almighty. I believe in the next life and all kinds of life… Death is just a little part of life…” He mentions that life forever would be a bore. [Coherence be damned!] “It’s understandable that a child be afraid and worry. Only an old man like me can begin to solve the meaning of life… Everything has a beginning, a middle and an end… Maybe this life is just the beginning…” Nearly everyone subscribes to that pattern; but the dramas sustaining the work of Ingmar Bergman don’t.

The train conductor snaps them out of that. They meet Adam at the station (the host seemingly and unbelievably forgetting who David was) and the less than fully welcome third proposes going to a hot club. (Before that, at a café for a bite, Adam salivates, “What a wonderful idea! The woman, the lover and the husband!” From there they take a ferry to the heart of Copenhagen [a craft resembling the boat in Bergman’s Summer Interlude]. On this interlude, Adam—perhaps stung by David’s congratulation, “Marianne said you were sober for several days”—maintains, “Women are realists. They choose the strongest. I have big muscles…” David mocks him that his works will be known 2000 years from now; and the artist reports, “You’re being ironic, but you’re right… Women love the great artists…” A flurry, in close-up, of a tray delivering their drinks, comes and goes without attention.)

   Back to David’s last-ditch hope at a hot club, Marianne moots, “Maybe another drink won’t hurt.” He, looking for a miracle, jazzes up the fanfare, “Promise me that we’re going to hell! [hold that thought]. I want to see something exciting. Slightly immoral. Something shocking!” There’s a jazz trio, far from shocking; a woman swirling, sort of like Rita Hayworth in, Gilda, and, to Adam’s annoyance, David and Marianne enjoying a dance together, cheek-to-cheek. In that moment of solitude for Adam, the budding family man, he notices a close friend, a hooker, in fact, and he prevails upon her to get David into single-guy mode. For good measure, he arranges by way of his close-buddy-bartender, to induce David to drink a notoriously unhealthy stimulant. (On entry, Adam calls out, “Marianne is an independent woman. She isn’t bourgeois [like you]. There is no such thing as purity. Only impotent men are faithful. Wives betray you without delay.”) Lise, the supposed distraction, complaining, “Business is bad,” tells Adam, “He’s very attractive” [and though he steps on Marianne’s toes, his renegade gambit shows him at his best]. Marianne knowing something’s that wasn’t there before, asks, “Are you crazy? What’s wrong with you?” (David’s explanation is not quite right—“This dance made me excited!”) She glares and marches away toward Adam, where she grabs the bottle out of his mouth, his equities plummeting, while the blur of the takeover could have been gold. Lise catches up the seldom-dancer, and declares, “David, you didn’t see me?” He smiles within his rare roll. “Give a kiss to Lise!” (Marianne sees this affection, and becomes even more angry. Adam remarks, “It’s nice that David found a girl.”) The new lovers come to the designated bartender. While waiting for the complex mixture, he asks her, “What do you do?” In a flash, she comes up with, “I’m a teacher,” adding, mysteriously, “You want a deal?”/ “What do you teach?” he continues. “My love, of course… What did you think?” And she exposes a shoulder and chest. David has a moment of nonplussed (“Where’s Marianne?”) ; and recovers with laughing out loud, “I’m an idiot, Lise… Hello!” (The ebb and flow of this tonal frontier being never surpassed in Bergman’s many delights.) Then he drinks some of the preparation (the bartender alarmed). He drains the glass (the bartender sticking out his tongue in empathy). “A love potion,” he says. Lise the critic says, “Yeah, good!” The bartender—right out of Depression Era Hollywood—fears the worst. “Can you give me the ingredients?” David asks. “It goes down to the knees… Now I’ve lost my muscles. Why did I do this?” he asks. And he’s glad he’s become (perhaps not for long) someone he’s never been. He orders a second wave of seemingly out of this world, and Bergman’s perfect pitch shows no more reaction from the front line. “There’s a kink in my neck,” the crasher observes; and his glasses fall off. “You look better without glasses,” Lise enthuses. He then treads another step toward dangerous and necessary territory. “Lise, my girl, you’re so beautiful one could die for. But you shouldn’t tie up your hair. You must be loose and free! Like rapids!…” (Cut to the farther range of the bar, with Adam smug and Marianne morose.) “Let’s dance!” the hidden talent calls out./ “Yes!” Lise winks to him. (All smiles.) On the crowded dance floor, Lise says, with more than professional delivery, “Kiss me, David!” He remembers he hasn’t had his second drink. On completing that, he says, “Now, I’m going to kiss the most beautiful girl in Denmark! Not even the King could disapprove!” He, tiger-like, tells the crowd, “Get out of the way, I need space!” He backs into Marianne, produces a rude gesture toward her, and pivots away. Adam laughs uproariously. David kisses Lise passionately. The room applauds. Marianne grabs Adam’s drink and drinks it down. David kisses Lise once more, as if he’d made a discovery needing more details. Unfortunately, impetuous and violent Marianne rushes into the caress; and chaos ensues. Recalling 15 years before and the seriously questionable embrace there, Marianne reverts to advantage at any cost. “Let me go! I’ll make mixed meat out of her!” Lise rushes to find David, but he has left the building, and left forever not only his moment in the sun, but hers’. She does find Adam, once again failing to find some kind of marriage. “I want to scream!” she tells him, far more a lady than what David had pulled out the stops for.

The denouement, winding up in a 5-star Copenhagen hotel and its bridal suite, with a card strung on the door handle ordering, “Do Not Disturb,” is one of the saddest celebrations you could ever imagine. Cutting from the bar, we have David and Marianne at twilight, along a canal as seen from the other side. She is shrieking like a complete fool, and marching toward him with a panzer attack, while he silently back-peddles. “How could you kiss that filthy and vulgar slut? And right in front of me! Your promises are worthless… I want to fuck you!” David, still slightly in a moment of vision that Marianne will never for a moment savor, has what he wanted, and he might as well  be dead. The advantage-pro dips into the world of entitlement and rococo: “I’m sad, cold and depressed. If there’s water here, I’m going to drown myself… I’m going to pummel you first!” David, shrinking by the minute, manages to say, “My beloved Marianne. What a day, what a night!” Sam, the fixer with the fixed limousine, had handled all the arrangements for a night of, if not love, victory. On being driven to the appropriate address, the princess exclaims, “David, you slut! You were so sure!” Masters of ceremonies. Midgets, forever! Once again, that 18th century music box confirming endless nothings.