When Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann met Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman in the early 1960s, she didn't know that he would become a powerful presence in her life. She starred in several of his films, including Persona (1966) and Autumn Sonata (1978), and lived with him for many years—together, they have a daughter. Ullmann recently completed directing her second film based on one of his scripts, Faithless, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival competition earlier this month. The movie recounts a middle-age woman's affair with her husband's best friend and the emotional destruction that results. Ullmann, 60, met with Newsweek's Dana Thomas on the Cote d'Azur after the premiere to talk about 81-year-old Bergman's influence on her work, and on others. Excerpts:

THOMAS: A lot of people are calling this "a Bergman movie" even though you directed it.

ULLMANN: Well, you know, you live with that. For the last movie I directed [Private Confessions in 1996], the critics wrote it was Bergman's best movie ever. I wasn't there, I wasn't even mentioned. And was I upset? No. I can't be upset. It's a privilege.

But this film really does feel like a Bergman movie.

It is, more than any other movie, because of the story. It's two films in one, really. How a script is made—the collaboration between a director and a writer—and the love story. The lead male character, the director, brings in his muse—who is supposed to be me—and he says, "Here's the monologue, you make the shooting script." That's what Ingmar does in real life. He says, "OK, come here, how do you see it? What do you believe when you hear these words?" That's how it happens.

And the love story?

If you look at every film Ingmar has done [or] written, he has made this journey: love, loss, betrayal, faithfulness, faithlessness. But I believe this movie is the final one on this subject. At 80 years old, he finally sees that life is forgiving. If he ever writes another film script, it will be about something completely different, or maybe it will be about eternal love. But not betrayal.

What makes Ingmar Bergman so special?

He has been brave enough to tell stories on film that are ordinary, stories you tell at the coffee table. And he takes time to tell the story. He knows it doesn't just happen with an explosion, or a new edit. It evolves slowly and then grips you, and then the whole thing happens. There are few filmmakers who dare to do that, or to tell the same story again and again. Because it is the story. People try to vary it with murders and other things, but really we're here to love and to lose and to be reborn and to get old and to die. That's our life. And that's what he tells.

Your style image-wise is very Bergmanesque.

It's the way I see movies. I want to see a face. I want to see two people react to each other. Two bodies. I want to see them in nature and in a room. Yes, Bergman does that, but there are a lot of other Scandinavian directors who do it this way, too.

How influenced are you by the way he makes films?

Obviously I have learned a lot working with Ingmar. The most important thing is the trust, the love, being a wonderful observer, so the people you are working with know that you are listening to them. And like Ingmar, I am very very prepared. I spent a year working on the shooting script. I knew everything that I wanted. And there was no way the cinematographer, trouble on the set, anything, could shatter me. I knew the story best, and I knew it on that studio floor.

What does he think about his influence on young directors?

He wouldn't talk about that. He reads Swedish papers—not many international papers—[and] they don't talk about it. Even students won't say "I learned from Ingmar," because they might end up like me, at 61, still having to say what you learned from him and not by yourself. But I do know they say that abroad, and sometimes we come home and tell him, and he'll say, "Oh, let's talk about something else." I believe deep down, though, it makes him very happy.