Do you love beautiful-looking arthouse films? Are you prepared for a film to pluck at your empathetic, tender heartstrings for an hour and a half? Then Bergman Island–a filmic love letter by French director Mia Hansen-Løve (Eden) to famed Swedish director Ingmar Bergman–is for you.
Not only is the film a respectful and enlightening look at the late filmmaker’s career (whose seminal works like The Seventh Seal and Persona have no doubt inspired all of cinema), it is also a reflection of melancholia and how invisible things can cause real-life effects within a couple.
Related: ‘Eden’ Review: An Unexpectedly Quiet Snapshot of the EDM Generation
Tim Roth and Vicky Krieps play Tony and Chris, a filmmaker couple who embark on the opportunity of a lifetime, attending an artist’s residency in Fårö, a Swedish island where Ingmar Bergman shot some of his most celebrated films. Upon arriving at the island, Chris (Krieps) immediately is suspicious of its beauty, claiming that she finds the island’s calm and perfection depressing.
The duo takes up residency in the house where Bergman was said to have written the screenplay of Scenes From a Marriage, the film that “made millions of people divorce.” Upon arriving, they immediately sense that they are in the shadow of an idol. The pressure for perfection intensifies the longer they stay, however, Tony (Roth) seems to have no trouble letting his ideas flow like running water. Chris, on the other hand, struggles with her unfinished screenplay.
Art imitates life in the second act of the film, when Chris begins to share her work in progress screenplay with Tony. Her words come to life as we’re transported into her pages and meet her protagonist, a young filmmaker named Amy (Mia Wasikowska). In Chris’s story, which she narrates, Amy is forced to work through complicated emotional entanglements when she runs into her first love Joseph (Ander Danielsen Lie) on the Fårö island. Amy’s struggles don’t seem so far off from Chris’s, giving the impression that Chris is working through her own struggles via her surrogate protagonist.
Bergman Island has a lovely warmth to it. It also has a sun-drenched breeziness that Call Me by Your Name also perfectly captured. Further, it’s enhanced by its transfixing harp melodies and score by Raphaël Hamburger. Not only do the idyllic coastlines elicit a sense of calm, they also act as a mini-history lesson for cinephiles young and old. Bergman Island is a film lover’s movie, paying tribute to an icon, by an up-and-coming icon.
Distributed by IFC Films, ‘Bergman Island’ is now playing in theaters and available to rent this Friday, October 22nd.
