Rent Cries and Whispers (1972)

Whispers - Cries and Whispers review by Avijit

Lucky Bergman was not French! Not hard to imagine what a modern day French filmmaker of the likes of Gaspar Noe (Irreversible, 2002) would have made of this quite violent theme. Not to be watched if you are feeling a bit low!

Acquired Taste - Cries and Whispers review by TP

My own fault really, I picked a film by a Director that I'd heard of but never seen before, and without really looking to see what it was. This is a dense arthouse film which relies on the viewer to fill in some big gaps in the plot for themselves. If you know the Director's themes and obsessions it probably all makes sense. If you sit down and watch it cold without having read up on it then you will, like me, find yourself heading for IMDB / Wikipedia to understand what on earth it all meant after it finished.

Red Rooms, Old Wounds, and a Lot of Suffering - Cries and Whispers review by griggs

Some films don’t unfold so much as operate on you, and Cries and Whispers did exactly that. I finished it shaken, a bit wrung out, and also weirdly grateful — like it had told me an ugly truth I probably needed.

It’s simple on paper: Agnes is dying, and her sisters show up to do the decent thing. But “decent” turns out to mean staying present only while it’s bearable. Maria (Liv Ullmann) brings warmth that can flip into something sharp. Karin (Ingrid Thulin) is all control and recoil, as if affection might burn. Harriet Andersson makes Agnes’s pain hard to dodge — not poetic, just raw.

The red-soaked house feels like the inside of a wound, and the film keeps drifting into memory and nightmare without warning. Anna (Kari Sylwan) is the anchor: care without performance, tenderness without bargaining.

It’s brutal, but it’s bracing — Bergman doesn’t soothe you. He tells you to sit down and stay.