Hagai Levi's 'Scenes from a Marriage' Premieres at Venice 78

At the 78th Venice International Film Festival, Hagai Levi presented his adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's 'Scenes from a Marriage' as a five-episode miniseries out of competition. The Israeli writer-director, long influenced by Bergman's work, was invited by Daniel Bergman to update the 1973 Swedish classic. Levi's version inverts the original gender roles: Jessica Chastain plays Mira, a tech manager and ambitious breadwinner, while Oscar Isaac portrays Jonathan, a philosophy professor and the primary caregiver. The couple's dissolution is triggered by Mira's affair with a younger colleague and a traumatic abortion. Levi shifts focus from marriage to the cost of divorce, exploring monogamy versus open relationships through a secondary couple. Each episode begins with a metacinematic device showing actors arriving on set, blurring reality and fiction. The series, produced by HBO, will air on Sky and NOW from September 20. Levi's inversion of roles, while faithful to the original's psychological depth, may not fully capture contemporary couple dynamics, according to reviewer Carlotta Petracci.