Word: widerberg
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Another plot problem is the reason for the suicide. Certainly, there were other alternatives to starvation. If Denmark was not safe, the two could have fled somewhere else. The plot may not be so important. Prettiness may be what Widerberg wants to get across, but to the audience the major motivation in the film is reduced to incredibility and that is a sad situation...
...WOULD suggest that Widerberg completely missed the point of the fable. He touched on it once or twice, but, in the main, he missed it. Elvira Madigan is not a story about two lovers who reject society and then die for their own love. It is a story of two lovers, loving ideally in a perfect setting, who find that their kind of love--the butterflies and the daisies and the wine and cheese--is not enough...
...there is music here, and beauty in the striving: "A blade of grass can be the world ...that the world is nothing without it." And Widerberg shows us the truth in his most masterful technical strokes. With his camera lens wide open, the depth of field is reduced, and all we can see is the blade of grass--Elvira's hair, and, in the end, the gray barrel of the pistol. The background--the rest of the world--is blurred: "When you look at the blade of grass, you can see it and nothing else. The rest of the world...
UNFORTUNATELY, Widerberg manages to blur other scenes he clearly does not want to blur. The wide-open lens causes objects to bounce in and out of focus, and the effect is annoying. The director has other technical problems. The cuts between scenes are sloppy; there are no smooth transitions...
...story gives Widerberg a chance to play games in the trees and the grass and the flowers. At times he is successful. The mock gunfight between Sparre and his friend on a huge old tree is a beautiful tableau. When Elvira and Sparre walk up a road, the scene has the haunting quality of a Munch painting. But these two scenes are the only truly fine outdoor sequences that are properly exposed. In the rest, the greens are mercilessly washed out in white light; exposures are nearly always one to two stops...