The Cinematheque

“Stunningly real and strangely haunting … Ekblad’s sinewy acting talent is just right for Zetterling’s intense dramatic style.”

Keith Keller, Variety

For her final feature, Mai Zetterling realized a full-circle project: a biopic of Agnes von Krusenstjerna (Stina Ekblad), the author Zetterling adapted in her first feature Loving Couples. Amorosa begins in a dreamscape rendering of a mental hospital before flashing into a lush, period-detailed version of reality, one in which the literary aspirant, then success, is surrounded by reminders that her behaviour, state of health, and imagination are, to the mostly male evaluators in her family and social circle, aberrant. It isn’t hard to see Krusenstjerna, who describes romance and family life as depraved institutions, as a foil for Zetterling and her own controversial art. Zetterling said, ​“I don’t find her morbid or strange or incomprehensible … I understand her completely.” Both Ekblad and Erland Josephson (The Sacrifice), who plays Krusenstjerna’s controlling partner, received acting prizes at Sweden’s Guldbagge Awards.

In Swedish and Italian with English subtitles

“In Zetterling’s [artist portraits], von Krusenstjerna and Van Gogh are not portrayed as tragic figures, only as people who took their own creative urges and their art seriously.”

Mariah Larsson, A Cinema of Obsession: The Life and Work of Mai Zetterling

“Why have I come back to this author? She wrote about men and women in conflict with one another. She wrote about love, to be sure, and the pain of love. She also wrote about family ties and tragedies: marriage, children, madness. She wrote lyrically, sometimes sentimentally, religious documents, fairy stories for grown-ups that often turned into horror stories. She wrote honestly about the dilemmas that women face.”

Mai Zetterling