This achievement, from a screenplay by Niklas Rådström with Troell and Agneta Ulfsäter Troell as co-writers and based on the latter’s story, certainly should take its place among the year’s best. Maria Heiskanen also gives a hauntingly striking performance as Maria, the protagonist, who goes through life suppressing her feelings and using the camera that she won as her emotional outlet. Mikael Persbrandt plays her drunken, boorish husband Sigfrid, a dockworker who may have some decent qualities buried beneath the booze, but who bullies and beats his wife and is furiously jealous of her efforts at expression through photography.

The bright spot in her relationships comes through a friendship with a local photographer Pedersen, played gently by Jesper Christensen. Maria planned to sell her camera in order to get some much-needed money, but Pedersen persuaded her to use it instead. He has become her mentor, and potentially more. It becomes clear that he is attracted to her, as she is to him, but since she is a married woman, convention stands in the way of their developing into a couple who might find happiness.

The film also is sophisticated in the way in recognizes the loyalty, and perhaps even love, that Maria still has for her husband despite all, and depicts an ultimate effort by him to make amends. The photography, with a credit shared by Troell and Mischa Gavrjusjov, is striking in its sepia look that suggests old family pictures.