The boy reaching out to the giant, shifting projection of a woman's face represents the universal human struggle for maternal connection and the pain of rejection. Within the film's psychological framework, this boy is a direct manifestation of Elisabeth's unwanted son, whom she secretly wished would die, as Alma later reveals in her searing monologue. The boy's hand tracing the out-of-focus face of a woman, which shifts between resembling Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson, symbolizes his desperate, futile attempt to grasp an elusive, emotionally distant mother who views him only as an unwanted duty. By placing this sequence within a self-reflexive frame of a starting and stopping film projector, Bergman links this maternal rejection to the very nature of cinema itself. The boy is reaching out to a shadow, a flat image on a screen that can never offer real warmth or reciprocal love. It is a profound metaphor for the human condition: we are all like that boy, reaching out to cold, beautiful illusions of love that remain forever out of focus and out of reach.■