In BERGMAN ISLAND, Mia Hansen-Løve (GOODBYE FIRST LOVE, EDEN) sends a filmmaking couple to Fårö, the chosen home and place of longing of director Ingmar Bergman. They want to spend the summer in one of Bergman‘s homes. He, Tony (Tim Roth), an established director, receives an invitation to present his work on Bergman Week. She, Chris (Vicky Krieps), is much younger and just starting her careeer. Hansen-Løve captures the very special atmosphere of this trip with incredible precision – the bright island sun, the serious intellectuals who meet at the film screenings and follow Bergman‘s work on the “Bergman Safari,“ the reserved islanders and the many moments between Tony and Chris as they plan to use the isolation to work on their respective screenplays. While Tony‘s seems to be going well, Chris fights with the blank page, stares out of the window, wanders on the island.

Finally, she finds a beginning, and as she tells Tony about it, BERGMAN ISLAND transforms and begins to show Chris‘ screenplay idea. It is the story of Amy (Mia Wasikowska), who travels to Fårö for her friend‘s wedding and meets Joseph (Anders Danielsen Lie) there, who is connected to an old, complicated relationship. This story is also about encounters and yearning and is captured so brilliantly it only takes minutes before you're swept away by it and become invested in the emotional worlds of the other couple. Hansen-Løve interlaces the narrative layers with Bergman themes and motifs with uncanny assuredness until the characters begin to blur. Like Amy, Chris also has a young daughter, and Mia Hansen-Løve has one too of course with her husband Olivier Assayas, a much older director who has visited Fårö many times and is a big Ingmar Bergman fan…
BERGMAN ISLAND explores similar terrain on all levels and follows the yearnings and the small imaginary blow outs and exclusions that play out in established couple dynamics. Hansen-Løve explores how every person is separate and alone in every relationship and how that is negotiated with their respective partners in every scene, every daily encounter and their reflections in the stories that the characters themselves tell. She does this playfully, without the existentialist desperation that Ingmar Bergman captured in his films, but it is decidedly in his footsteps.

Hendrike Bake

Translation: Elinor Lewy