Summer Interlude - Plot

Plot

Marie (Nilsson) is a successful but emotionally distant prima ballerina in her late twenties. During a problem-filled dress rehearsal day for a production of the ballet Swan Lake she is unexpectedly sent the diary of her first love; a college-boy called Henrik (Malmsten) whom she met and fell in love with while visiting her Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Erland's house on a summer vacation thirteen years before. With the cancellation of the dress rehearsal until the evening Marie takes a boat across to the island where she conducted her relationship with Henrik and remembers their playful and carefree relationship.

Three days before the end of the summer when Henrik is to return to college and Marie to the theatre, Henrik falls and suffers injuries that result in his death after diving from a cliff face. Her Uncle Erland, not actually her relation but a friend and admirer of Marie's mother and now similarly smitten with Marie, takes her away for the winter and helps her to "put up a wall" to lessen the pain of losing her lover and effectively close her off emotionally. While visiting Erland's house she discovers that it was him who sent the diary to her at the theatre; he has had it ever since the day at the hospital when Henrik died from his injuries. She expresses regret and disgust that she ever allowed Erland to touch her, suggesting he took advantage of her grief and they had an affair following Henrik's death.

Following the evening dress rehearsal she talks with the ballet master, who recognises her single minded devotion to her dancing and understands her problems, and then her current lover, a journalist called David, who she appears to be in the process of breaking up with. Marie decides to let David read Henrik's diary and then open up to him about her past experiences to explain her conflicted feelings and emotional coldness. After he has left she removes her make up and as she does so regains some of her lost youth and innocence, smiling again and pulling faces in the mirror. The film concludes during the successful first performance where we see Marie meeting David, now more understanding of Marie's past, in the wings. She happily kisses him and returns to the stage to finish the ballet.