Identity Remakes in and out of Time

Abstract

Film Quarterly columnist Rebecca Wanzo reads Hagai Levi’s remake of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage as a case study for ongoing debates about remakes. Noting the particular scorn a remake can be subject to when racial or gender identities are changed or updated, she suggests that Levi’s Scenes is a feminist update that also illustrates how genre can get in the way of more progressive renderings of gender roles, revealing instead the intransigence of heteronormative gender performance.