The promise of summer is often as fleeting as a cool breeze on a hundred-degree day. The season offers plenty of natural escapism for those who want a break from their monotonous realities. The beach doesn’t exactly provide any answers for people in need of more permanent solutions for their broader sense of dread, a dynamic that Ingmar Bergman’s 1953 film Summer with Monika (original Swedish title: Sommaren med Monika) centers its narrative around.

The film starts off with the chance encounter between Harry (Lars Ekborg), an errand boy at a factory, and Monika (Harriet Andersson), a grocery store clerk. Harry quickly falls for the carefree Monika, who invites him to take her out for a movie. Sick of the abuse from her alcoholic father in their home full of kids, Monika urges Harry to help her run away. The two take shelter in Harry’s father’s boat, spending the summer camping around the Swedish Archipelago.

Their bliss starts to sour as the two return home, with Monika pregnant. The promise of summer wears off for Harry, who takes his work and studies more seriously in an effort to provide for Monika and their child. Monika does not find fulfilment from being a mother or a homemaker, wishing to resume her breezy existence and skirt her growing responsibilities.

Bergman does an excellent job using light to contrast the cold, stuffy nature of Stockholm City with the seemingly limitless escapism offered by the Archipelago. All of us are supposed to grow up at some point or another, but Monika certainly doesn’t want to. Andersson rarely plays Monika for sympathy, but you can understand her claustrophobia toward her dreary monotony when juxtaposed against the ephemeral nature of summer.

Harry and Monika are hardly a match made in heaven, but Ekborg and Andersson have the kind of natural chemistry that makes you understand how the two were a good fit for a season. Considered scandalous at the time, Bergman includes a few shots of Andersson’s bare buttocks while swimming, adding a layer of eroticism to Monika’s insatiable quest for fulfilment.

The viewer’s natural sympathies drift toward Harry, the only one taking life seriously, but Monika carries an uncomfortable sense of realism that contributes to the film’s lasting appeal. It’s easy to dismiss Monika as selfish, until you consider her perpetual lack of agency. The inevitability of summer, its perpetual annual presence, cannot be clung to, for summer is finite. We all have to go back to the cruel world eventually. Reluctance to do so doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person, it just makes you human.