Swede retreat
Creative couple’s Bergman pilgrimage delivers an emotional, layered story.
BERGMAN ISLAND directed by Mia Hansen-Løve
They say you should “write what you know”, and Mia HansenLøve’s perceptive portrait of a woman grappling with how to succeed as an artist, partner and parent is self-described “auto-fiction”. The French writer-director (whose Isabelle Huppert-starring Things to Come was in the New Zealand International Film Festival in 2016) knows what it is to be in a relationship with another filmmaker – her former partner is director Olivier Assayas – and the challenges faced by those women directors balancing motherhood with a career.
These are the preoccupations of Vicky Krieps’ Chris, who arrives on the Swedish Baltic Sea island Fårö with filmmaker husband Tony (Tim Roth) as writers in residence.
Drawn to the destination that was an inspiration for Ingmar Bergman, Chris and Tony interrogate locals, visit cultural sites and revisit the Swedish auteur’s films. By day, they work on their own projects, but Chris soon finds herself discontented and lost.
Beautifully shot in stunning scenery, Bergman Island is a quietly intriguing film, with intense and natural performances from Krieps and Roth as the match whose love appears strong to start with – tiny details in brief glances and small kindnesses speak to a happy coupling – but a distance grows as pensive Chris questions her artistic prowess and nonchalant problem-solver Tony cannot give her the reassurance she craves.
To top it off, they’re sleeping in the bedroom used in Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, “a film that made millions of people divorce!” explains the cheery caretaker.
Hansen-Løve’s script is strong in emotional intelligence, while also articulating relatable philosophical quandaries: “I don’t like it when artists I love don’t behave well in real life,” Chris complains on hearing that Bergman sired nine children across five marriages, and still had a lengthy and lauded career.
Things get even more interesting in the film-withinthe-film, with Mia Wasikowska and Anders Danielsen Lie as young lovers whose frustrated affair may echo Chris’ own dissatisfaction. The stories bleed into each other in a believable rather than mystical manner.
The world doesn’t lack for homages to Bergman – Scenes from a Marriage was remade for HBO just last year – but this rises above just being a tribute to the old master into something personal and special.
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