A LESSON IN LOVE *

Do all comedies have to be funny? I suppose not but it helps, particularly if you want to distinguish them from tragedies. Ingmar Bergman's "A Lesson in Love" is described as a comedy perhaps to distinguish it from the likes of "Through a Glass Darkly" and "Winter Light". It's certainly one of old sour-puss's lighter films but it's hardly funny. It's another 'Battle of the Sexes' in which a middle-aged couple, (Eva Dahlbeck and Gunnar Bjornstrand, both excellent), try to rekindle their relationship after both of them have had affairs. It's like a Noel Coward comedy but without the comedy. In fact, it's like any other Ingmar Bergman film in which men and women analyse what brings them together and keeps them apart but done in that far-fetched style we call 'theatrical'. It's certainly a very minor Bergman which is probably why it isn't often revived but it's not dislikeable, just a little familiar.