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MONIKA is an intense, sensual drama, adapted by Ingmar Bergman from a novel by Per Anders Fogelström. In an often-praised, stellar performance, Harriet Andersson, on her way to becoming a Bergman regular, plays the fiery teenager Monika, and Lars Ekborg is Harry, a sensitive youth who becomes her lover. Together they escape to a remote island off the coast of Sweden, where they spend a carefree summer exploring nature and giving in to their own passionate instincts. When Monika finds herself pregnant, the young couple is forced to return to the city, where they settle down to a dull domestic life together, with the prospect of a bleak future in a drab working-class environment. The impulsive Monika soon decides she wants more out of life...Because of the occasionally erotic nature of the material (and Bergman's uninhibited rendering of it), prior to being released in this country the movie was edited, retitled MONIKA: THE STORY OF A BAD GIRL, and marketed as a racy sexploitation film by its U.S. distributor, in turn earning the director the disapproval of those who considered the finished product obscene.
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