Bergman Island
Directed by Mia Hansen-Løve
Running time: 1hr52 | REVIEWED BY CATHERINE BRAY
Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth star in Bergman Island
Dancing a pas de deux twice over, here comes Mia Hansen-Løve with a film of doubles, doubled. Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth play a couple, Chris and Tony, seemingly modelled on or inspired by another couple: writer-director Hansen Love and her former partner, writer-director Olivier Assayas. These funhouse mirror images are visiting Fårö, a place apparently steeped in Ingmar Bergman tourism, to host a masterclass and work on their respective scripts.
Part-way through, the film folds in two and we watch a second narrative play out, based on the script that Chris is trying to write. Within this script we find another couple of couples, Amy (Mia Wasikowska) and her offscreen partner, and Joseph (Anders Danielsen Lie) and his offscreen partner. Amy and Joseph used to be a couple, and they drunkenly rekindle the flame at a wedding. Providing respite from partners old and new, in both halves of the narratives we find a young filmmaker called Hampus Nordenson, playing a young filmmaker called Hampus Nordenson. In both halves of the narrative he offers platonic friendship with an undertow of… something. Maybe sex. But maybe not sex.
I remember, in my twenties, once writing into a film review a line, which made sense in the context of the review, about the thrill of an affair (though I put it more crudely). It was a gambit. The person to whom it was addressed figured out what was going on, and matters proceeded from there.
I mention this because Bergman’s Island feels like a playful game in this kind of register. It’s a film that’s fun for a general audience, but it feels too like there is a much smaller audience for it, who will enjoy it even more. Perhaps I’m wrong and it simply is what it is, but I’d love to know all its secrets.
BERGMAN ISLAND (2021) Written by Mia Hansen-Løve | Shot by Denis Lenoir | Edited by Marion Monnier
Selected for the Competition at the 74th Cannes Film Festival
