Directed by Ingmar Bergman. Starring Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson. In Swedish with English subtitles. Unrated. Plays Friday to Thursday, July 22 to 28 (except Tuesday, July 26), at the Pacific Cinémathí¨que

It's been a long time since anyone asked, "Have you seen the new Ingmar Bergman film?" And those words may not be uttered again, because the cinematic master-the only one still living of the old guard of greats-has declared that Saraband will be his last offering.

Saraband was named after a Spanish dance popular in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, and J.?S. Bach immortalized the word with his composition of a series of solo cello pieces. Indeed, Bergman's chamber suite has that kind of timeless quality, and relates to the seeming inability of his characters to make music, or anything else, with each other.

Ostensibly, the movie is a sequel to Scenes From a Marriage, the 1973 miniseries for Swedish TV that followed the ups and especially the downs of research scientist Johan (Erland Josephson) and divorce lawyer Marianne (Liv Ullmann). Here, some 30 years after their own parting, they meet again at the instigation of Marianne, still practising law. Johan has retired to a remote farmstead, where his ex-wife finds him quietly stewing in his own bile. She stays for a time in the chilly country atmosphere.

Although these familiar characters share much with their forebears, there is one significant change that has gone seemingly unnoticed in Saraband's glowing reviews: where the youngish marrieds were just seven years apart when we first met them, there's now a 23-year difference in their ages. The actual disparity for the actors is closer to 15 years, but it was presumably important to the director to shift his on-screen alter ego (Josephson is the only player who has appeared in every phase of Bergman's work) to his own age at the time of filming.

This makes it possible for Johan to have a son from an even earlier marriage, a failed musician called Henrik (Bí¶rje Ahlstedt, who played the theatre director in Fanny and Alexander) who has recently lost his wife to cancer. The black-and-white photo we keep seeing of the late, beloved Anna is actually a picture of Bergman's wife, Ingrid, who also died of cancer not long ago. So the great director is working out some unfinished business with his own partner and an estranged son.

The wild card in this bout of cinematic therapy is Henrik's teenage daughter, Karin (Julia Dufvenius, who's so strong you can forgive her for being almost 30), a promising musician being smothered by her failing father's twisted needs. The only connection between Henrik and Johan, other than unbridled hatred, is equally strong reverence for the late Anna and a keen interest in the girl she left behind. So the men start parrying over what to do with Karin's future.

Moviegoers unfamiliar with classic cinema of the 1950s and '60s-when it aspired to real art-may be struck by the amount of intense palaver here. And Bergman fans who lost track of him since his big-screen retirement almost a quarter-century ago might be surprised at the master's seeming lack of interest in formal innovation. He has since then concerned himself with theatre, TV movies, and scripts for others (most notably, Liv Ullmann). But there is still sharp architectural design in the simple, video-shot images, and the depth of feeling in the dialogue, not to mention in the acting, is unsurpassable. You don't come away from Saraband wishing that Johan and Marianne had stayed together, but you're certainly glad they met one more time.