Un verano con Mónica

Sabemos que, en parte, el cine es un arte en el que los hombres filman a las mujeres que aman, pero pocas veces esta afirmación se hace tan patente como en algunos primeros planos aislados, irrepetibles. Aquellos en los que el cineasta sostiene la imagen del rostro de “su” actriz mientras esta ojea el objetivo y posa para su director, dando muestras de un deseo que alcanza al espectador. Esto ocurre, claro, en la célebre escena extradiegética de Un verano con Mónica, donde Harriet Anderson nos mira de un modo inquisitivo, felino y adúltero, advirtiéndonos de su traición al protagonista y dando lugar, en palabras de Jean-Luc Godard, “a un renacimiento del cine moderno”. El plano no solo fomenta, pues, la economía narrativa -una mirada funciona como ensimismada elipsis del adulterio-, sino que también permite la emancipación de un espectador que ve superados los límites de la gramática clásica.

Shot in rich black and white, “Monika” shows a director in absolute control of his medium and its singular expressivity. In the early city scenes Bergman crowds the frame with objects and people, creating a sense of claustrophobia for the lovers and for those of us watching them struggle to find a place of their own. Once they make their escape, the jammed, Cubistic cityscape gives way to pastoral vistas that melt into one another as the shimmering sun dissolves into images of glistening water and a sky as sheltering as it is limitless. In the sky’s boundlessness you intuit the expanse of new love, which Bergman also conveys through breathtaking close-ups of Monika and Harry nuzzling each other’s faces like foals. The association of female sexuality with the natural order might be hard to take if Bergman didn’t complicate the cliché with such unexpected depth. With her vulgar manners and sudden cruelty, Monika comes across as a difficult, even impossible heroine, which seems very much to Bergman’s point. We can judge her if we so choose, but he refuses, as evident from the justly famous shot in which she looks directly into the camera for about 30 long seconds. In 1958 the young Jean-Luc Godard argued that with this shot Monika “calls on us to witness her disgust at involuntarily choosing hell instead of heaven.” I think Monika is defying us to judge her. She doesn’t belong to the world of domestic banality, and neither did Bergman.