The Other Way Around review - teasing Spanish study of a breakup with unexpected depth

★★★★ THE OTHER WAY AROUND Teasing Spanish study of a breakup with unexpected depth

Jonás Trueba's film holds the romcom up to the light for playful scrutiny

Can a romcom be intellectually challenging while hitting all the sweet spots of the genre? Jonás Trueba, the director of the award-winning Spanish film The Other Way Around (Volveréis, literally “you will return”), has confected something close to that.

Blu-ray: Ingmar Bergman Vol 4

★★★★★ BLU-RAY: INGMAR BERGMAN VOL 4 The Swedish master-magician's late mid-life movies

The Swedish master-magician of the cinema's late mid-life movies

Another box-set from the BFI full of Bergman treasures, from core catalogue classics such as Fanny and Alexander (1982), Cries and Whispers (1972), Autumn Sonata (1978) and Scenes from a Marriage (1973) to less well-known films such as After the Rehearsal (1984) and From the Lives of Marionettes (1980).

Blu-ray: Ingmar Bergman Vol 3

A box set surveys the relentless darkness of Bergman's 1960s films

The release of each box-set in the BFI’s Blu-ray four-volume collection of Ingmar Bergman films is a delight. Volume 3 provides some of the Swedish master’s essential works.

Blu-ray: Ingmar Bergman Vol 2

The timeless work of a cinematic master

In my teens, I was one of the budding cinephiles who ran the Film Club at my boarding school. Once a month, we’d rent an arthouse movie. The films would be projected on the Saturday night.

Persona, Riverside Studios review - Bergman masterpiece transformed into 'The Mumbling'

★★ PERSONA, RIVERSIDE STUDIOS  Bergman masterpiece transformed into 'The Mumbling'

One woman barely speaks, the other can't be heard and two men interfere

A work of genius isn't sacred, copyrighted territory. A great film may become a play, a novel a film; the adaptation shouldn't be about fidelity, as Elena Ferrante has written about the latter case, but down to to the director "to find...the language with which to get to the truth of his film from that of the book, to put them together without one ruining the other and dissipating its force".

Obituary: Bibi Andersson 1935-2019

OBITUARY Bibi Andersson 1935-2019

David Thompson pays tribute to one of cinema's most enduring icons

"One talks, the other doesn’t" is about as crude a description as could be of the Swedish masterpiece, Persona. Profoundly experimental even today, Ingmar Bergman’s film was at base about the intense, vampiric encounter between a mute actress suffering a breakdown and the garrulous nurse assigned to care for her.

DVD/Blu-ray: Bergman - A Year in a Life

★★★★ BERGMAN - A YEAR IN A LIFE The Swedish cinema maestro dissected

Master and monster: the Swedish cinema maestro dissected

1957 was a busy year for a very busy director: Ingmar Bergman made two of his most famous films – The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, several TV dramas, and a number of major stage productions. All the while, he was suffering from painful stomach ulcers, juggling a number of love affairs and breaking through, after a decade of increasingly accomplished and controversial films, as one of the leading film-makers in the world.

DVD/Blu-ray: The Touch

Bergman's typically individual take on a difficult affair has flashes of vintage brilliance

The touch is not always light here. Swathes of clunking, cliché-ridden English dialogue threaten to make the star-crossed lovers look ridiculous, and one of them (Elliott Gould) can be a wooden actor at times.

DVD/Blu-ray: Bergman's The Magic Flute

Pretty start, heart of darkness: the greatest of all opera films now available to UK viewers

Opera on film's most magical offering, better by some way than Joseph Losey's cinematically tricksy Don Giovanni, at last makes it to Region 2 in this BFI dual-format release.