SUMMER WITH MONIKA: Fantasy Love Doesn’t Solve Trauma

Summer love on a deserted island isn’t real life. That’s the Gordian knot that ties the hearts of Monika and Harry in Ingmar Bergman’s 1953 Summer with Monika. Erotic and heartbreaking, we watch two teenagers caught in the throes of an idyllic love. It’s a love they both long for, given their troubled, sad early lives. But it’s also an escape from life’s cruelties and realities, which they can’t really avoid …