Persona (1966) - Swedish

Swedish director Ingmar Bergman weaves the vastly contrasted lives of a nurse and actress together in a blaze of envy and jealousy. Elisabeth, an actress who becomes mute one day on set, is taken into the care of Nurse Alma. The head nurse advises that the both of them take a trip to her summer home in order to keep recuperate. Elisabeth's muteness serves as a template for Alma's confessions of past sins, and eventually, Alma seeks to destroy all of herself and wishes to become Elisabeth.

The editing of the film suggests a zealous adolescence by beginning with a bright light, followed by a film strip, followed by dormant figure in beds. The only one to awake is a young boy who attempts to read only to be arrested by the projected image of woman. The tactile sense in the film is also quite evident considering the boy touches the projected image of woman very attentively. This beginning has nothing to do with the overall story arc and it only wraps up the film in the end. The fast paced editing is one to jolt anyone out of their seats.

After the non-linear beginning, Elisabeth and Alma begin to discover much about each other, but Elisabeth refuses to speak, so we are mostly learning of Alma with nothing to tell us about Elisabeth aside from what Alma assumes about her. The two become very close, touching and feeling each other's hair and body's. They stare deeply into one another yet Alma really loses it later in the film, even by attempting to destroy Elisabeth with a piece of broken glass. Alma's attempts to get her to talk reach insane ends and it deconstructs each woman's persona that they've lived in their individual lifestyles. The persona's each woman takes on is a permeable veil only in that one woman may act and live like another. In a beautifully constructed scene, Elisabeth enters Alma's room in ghostlike fashion. To Alma's relief, she stands in the billowy curtains just outside staring at Alma's awakened body. They then begin to wrap feel each other's hair and wrap each other in them. Strange? Yes! Ambiguously gay? Indeed! But the scene speaks for itself in its attempts to describe the envy of one another's soul to become and engulf another. Give this film a watch. It is Bergman's masterpiece.