Faithless

Faithless (2000) is a Scandinavian drama you can watch online on iFILM, written by Ingmar Bergman and directed by Liv Ullmann — the kind of collaboration that produces films you sit with long after the credits.

An elderly filmmaker works on a screenplay. His protagonist is Marianne: a theater actress, wife of conductor Markus, mother of a nine-year-old girl. While Markus is away on tour, an old family friend — David, a director — comes for dinner and stays the night. The affair that follows moves fast. The damage moves slowly. Marianne leaves for David. Markus refuses custody of their daughter. What Bergman is actually after is not the betrayal itself but the mechanics of it: how people with full awareness of what they're doing and to whom keep doing it. Lena Endre carries Marianne with a self-knowledge that makes her impossible to reduce to either victim or villain. Erland Josephson plays the elderly filmmaker framing the story — unmistakably Bergman examining his own past.

At 154 minutes, Ullmann holds the chamber format tight: nearly every scene unfolds in closed rooms, two or three people with nowhere to go. This is not a film that releases the tension. Stream Faithless online on iFILM.