Three brothers and one of their colleagues have arranged to meet their wives at a summer home in the Stockholm archipelago. As they wait for the men to arrive, the women discuss the hopes and fears of their various marriages, with each in turn telling their story. To rediscover Waiting Women is to be reminded of the gentle, charming melancholy with which Bergman’s ‘summer years’ were so appealingly filled. With Summer Interlude on one side and Summer with Monika on the other, Waiting Women has the lazy sensuality of a hot holiday afternoon, a timeless reflection on matters of possible consequence which, in the sunlight, have a manageably insubstantial quality. Each of the film’s episodes has the potential for grim tragedy, and yet from each the pain is rippled away in the telling, so that against all odds the mood at the end of the day is one of fulfilment and joy.
1952.
English subtitles.
Black and white.
107 mins.