Maria Sundbom in The Bridge

[Anonymous]

I can’t post an image but I started watching The Bridge again last night. In series 1 episode 2 there’s some back-story about social worker Stefan Lindberg. It surrounds his sister Sonja, played by Maria Sundbom. She is portrayed as a mentally ill down-and-out which has to include the way she dresses. To keep warm, she is seen wrapped up in an old Afghan coat (the ones made of large pieces of sheepskin sewn together the the fur on the inside but exposed along the seams) (or – now I’ve looked again – it was probably a parka) and leggings. It soon becomes obvious that she is topless under the coat and eventually she ends up on some very wet ground where her coat comes off in a struggle with her brother who is trying to rescue her from her life. Two things occurred to me:

1) (Boring but inevitable…) Why did a drama as well put together as The Bridge need a gratuitous wet/topless scene? Perhaps it was showing that she’d fallen to her lowest possible level but I’m not convinced.

2) (More interesting perhaps…) How common is it to use complete or partial nakedness to portray insanity? If you saw someone wandering around town naked, would you assume they were too warm, a bit absent-minded, doing a dare, making a film, or that they were mentally ill and in need of help? This reminds me a bit of a local newspaper story where a naked rambler was being sought by police “to check she was ok” – I wonder why they thought she might not be? There was no evidence mentioned that she seemed to be escaping from something, she was just having a day out in the countryside naked.

Don Smith, Martin, Susan and 2 more people like this

[Martin]

interesting point. I have a film where I, as the lead, go out of my mind and will be required to discard everything. But I see that as more “throwing away reality” than necessarily an indication of insanity. Equally important will be the need for me to present my character going mad by having a panic attack and ripping at his own flesh.

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