Ingmar Bergman’s “The Virgin Spring” involves the rape of a virgin in medieval Sweden and questions the meaning of God’s (initial) silence when her father takes revenge.
Despite this unrelentingly close experience of events, a number of self-conscious shots in which we only see the back of main actress Denise Newman’s head, and a story that is very simple, first-time director Hermanus succeeds in gripping his audience thanks to his self-assured direction that steers the film away from any fake sentimentality.
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