Henrik and Karin sleeping together?

No it's not normal for a father and daughter to sleep together in Sweden or any other country. I thought it was pretty obvious that they had an incestuous relationship which probably started before the mother died and got more intense after she died. Now the daughter is trying to break away. I thought it was also obvious that the father, Henrik, had multiple psychological problems he was trying to dump on his daughter. Just my opinion.

I saw the kiss as being given by Karin, but Henrik making it opened mouth.

Just saw this on DVD. In "The Making of..." bonus feature, Bergman does explain to the actors that someone once told him "That which is half concealed is far more seductive than that which you can fully see." I suppose that might be the theme of the whole movie. But at the end I was left with a bunch of unanswered questions--which don't seem to be answered by the summaries on IMDB. But this was also a much longer TV mini-series in Sweden, and maybe it was explained more in the parts that were cut. But maybe you're supposed to have unanswered questions. As for the sleeping together and the kiss, there is a reference late in the movie to Karin being a substitute for his wife--maybe on the sexual level too. Hard to say. If there was something sexual going on, why didn't Karin talk to Marianne about it? Or was it all about the cello? Or is music just some symbolic representation of obsession/repression? What? ??? Everyone seems to be pushing at least one other person away, except Marianne. Is that it? Is that the key??? And the scene at the end where Marianne touches her insane daughter's face...is she doing that because she sees how screwed up all these other relationships are, and in comparison her relationship with her insane daughter is more "normal"?

To me there's more than half concealed here, it's more like 90% concealed. It was interesting, but I would like a little more revealed, please. Sort of like going to an art gallery and focusing on a few dots in an impressionist painting. It creates curiosity, but looking at the whole painting is more satisfying.

You could read it as deliberately ambiguous (anything ranging from just odd, to borderline incestuous, to definitely incestuous), or you could not read anything into it and just take what Bergman gives us, which is a view I'd lean toward only because I haven't seen Bergman withhold information from audiences on purpose; there's really no reason to think he wouldn't have been up front about it, if this had been going on, particularly since the story isn't seen strictly from the POV of any single character (and therefore there's no reason to hide the actions of any character).

If this view is true, what you're left with--given reasonable inference--is a surrogate relationship 1) that has father and daughter in the same bed without having sex, but still signaling the father's inappropriate and unhealthy emotional dependence on the daughter; and 2) in which the occasional father-daughter sign of affection (a hug, a kiss, whatever) creates an inappropriate reaction in the father that makes him want to shade the touch, or hug, or kiss as if it were to Anna, causing Karin to have to stop him. (The evidence that this routine had occurred before is that, when that kiss gets creepy, she pushes him off without any particularly big fuss, as if she's used to it. But if it had been an incestuous power relationship, you wouldn't expect to see her push him off at all; and if she had, you wouldn't expect him to let it go at that, particularly if control was partly the point of the sexual activity, since it was at that moment that he could have been expected to want to control her even more than usual.)

Also, remember that they _were_ living in a cottage--the way it was filmed, it looked like a very small place even for a cottage--so it wouldn't have been that unusual to have only one bedroom and only one bed. That would have put them in the situation of having to make a special arrangement if they were going to sleep separately, possibly with one of them being less comfortable every night (on a sofa, whatever). Not that the father shouldn't have seen to it that he did so; he should have, obviously. Point is, it came off to me as probably a matter of convenience that made it easier to ignore the inappropriateness of the arrangement, and also to distract themselves from the actual motive for sleeping in the same bed ("because there's only one bed" as opposed to "because I have a really creepy emotional dependency on my daughter the surrogate").

The "she knew" (re the letter), I thought, referred to the fact that Anna knew what kind of possessiveness Henrik was capable of; in fact, if I'm not mistaken, what follows in the dialogue immediately (from Karin) is something about how the mother knew how things would be at that time (at the time Karin is reading the letter and has this decision to make), although if you think an incestuous relationship _is_ going on, it wouldn't be hard to see those lines from Karin as referring to it. I'd have to go back and see exactly what words were used, but when I saw the film I don't remember thinking there was any particular reason to read that part of the dialogue as indicating incest--but then, I don't remember any lines specifically _excluding_ that possibility, either, which is kind of aggravating. (Now I guess I'll go find that spot on the DVD. Maybe I missed something.)

In fact, I guess that's kind of the problem, in that you can make an equally plausible case that if Bergman wanted us to know for sure that there was _no_ incestuous relationship, he wouldn't have left so many ambiguous clues.

If I had to share a bed with one of my parents because the cottage was too small, I'd find somewhere else to go. But maybe it's just a sign of Karin's and Henrik's twisted psychological dependency.

There was a strong physical resemblance between Karin and her mother Anna. We know from Anna's last letter that there was already a bad psychological connection between Karin and Henrik, but perhaps it became more physical after Anna died and Henrik turned all his attention to Karin.

However, in a sense the question of a physical relationship is somewhat moot. While it would be very damaging on its own, the psychological dependency of those two on each other was extremely damaging all by itself. The most implausible part of the movie for me was that after two years of this smothering dependency Karin was able to turn away from Henrik, albeit with the support of Marianne and Johan. That kind of incestuous relationship is so extreme that if the child has the will to pull away, it usually happens immediately. If not, then the child is stuck forever.

The primary purpose of theater (Bergman was also a theater director) is to mirror life, to represent, or re-present life in all its complexity, ambiguity, and un-knowingness. We don't always know what's going on, right, especially when the film begins with someone paying a visit to someone she hasn't seen in decades. I was not surprised at all by the confusion of roles and relationships, and found it quite natural that Bergman reveals a little more, and a little more, but never turns it into a recitation of the facts. After all, these were fraught relationships, and one of the early statements about family dislocation was the father's seeming inability to work on an issue he had had with his son some 45 years previously. I mean, wow! What we have here is a failure to communicate, as someone said.
Is it then a reasonable hypothesis that we are not to know whether there was sexual confusion or not, because the characters seem to be meant to be about as clueless as is possible? I was very moved by this film, because it is like life - each one of us human beings is a separate world, and we are surrounded by mystery and uncertainty. From the Bergman movies I've seen, it seems that there is no one better at portraying the mystery and isolation within families, and especially between parents and children. I suggest that the viewer not try to understand, or get to the bottom of it, or figure it out, but rather just let the mystery sink in.

It seems really clear to me that they had a prior sexual relationship when you look at their reactions to the kiss. She pulls away repulsed but not surprised, indicating that that was far from the first time they had kissed in that fashion. He reacted by not being the least bit embarrassed or regretful, just being disappointed.

If that was the first time they had kissed in that fashion, she would have been freaked out by it and he would have been apologetic for the momentary loss of emotional control.

Also, that cottage was not sufficiently small to justify a father and adult daughter sleeping in the same bed but that act alone could be a symptom of unhealthy attachment without any incest. The incestuous kiss not being regarded with any shock or really any emotion at all is pretty obvious confirmation of prior incest.

I agree with you that uncomplicated answers to questions like these are preferable. When a father and daughter sensually kiss and then, other than one of them not wanting to do it, neither addresses it, the uncomplicated answer is that it is not the first time they have kissed in that fashion. That he randomly did this for the first time due to some emotional upheaval and she didn't respond in a surprised fashion because of whatever convoluted emotional explanation you might concoct is the more complicated explanation.

BE YOUR OWN FANBOY

For me, I think that Henrik was trying to use Karin as a substitute for his wife. I do think that they had a incestuous relationship and that Karin felt much guilt and torment over it. Henrik loved his daughter so much, but could not deal with losing his wife, so he projected his love for his wife onto his daughter which of course was very destructive and permanently damaging. Karin felt imprisoned but also helpless and apart of her wanted to be her mother as well because her mother represents so much of what she strives to be, a loving and nurturing creature.