Jessica Chastain and real-life pal Oscar Isaac redo Bergman

By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press

VENICE, Italy (AP) — Jessica Chastain has been friends with Oscar Isaac since their Julliard days but says it was “a blessing and a curse” to play his wife in a remake of Ingmar Bergman’s classic “Scenes From a Marriage.” The film premiered Saturday at the Venice Film Festival. It was a blessing because they didn’t need to get to know one another and could be brutally honest with one another. But it was also a curse because they couldn’t take a break from their togetherness. The project reimagines in a contemporary American context the unravelling of a marriage depicted in Bergman’s 1973 Swedish television miniseries that starred Bergman’s longtime partner, Liv Ullmann. It’s a five-episode HBO series directed by Hagai Levi.