What's this? Quarrelling already? You don't waste much time. That's a mouthful from the screenplay by Ingmar Bergman (directed by the Danish-born Bille August of Pelle the Conqueror) based on the courtship and early married life of his actual parents, a pious Lutheran pastor in a Godforsaken rural outpost and his upper-middle-class citified wife. Little Ingmar himself is no more than a bun in the oven at the fade-out. The movie, shot in cold constricted dreary overcast color (where's Sven Nykvist when we need him?), is over three hours long despite not wasting much time on anything but quarrelling. And indeed when you know that it was cut down from a six-hour version for European television, you might wonder whether you're missing out on some rest and respite from the fray, or at the very least some lengthier preamble to it. The second (and shorter) half, after the long-postponed nuptials, is rather better than the first, with some particularly wrenching treatment of the character of an abused child. It says something, maybe something about our respect for Ingmar Bergman, maybe something about the virtues and rewards of perseverance, that we are still at that point prepared to be wrenched. With Samuel Froler and Pernilla August. (1992) — Duncan Shepherd