“Bergman Island” is Mia Hansen-Løve’s best and most accomplished film. If she showed signs of brilliance in “Eden” and “Things to Come,” then here she’s found the perfect vehicle for her cinematic sensibilities — a dreamy and personal meta work that plays as joyously as a breezy summer day.
Although Hansen-Løve’s film can be seen as an homage to Ingmar Bergman, that isn’t the point of the film. If anything, this is more about Hansen-Løve than the legendary Swedish director. A meta-romance with obvious parallels to her now defunct marriage with filmmaker Olivier Assayas.
Set in Fårö, which Bergman called home for close to 40 years until his death, and now a touristic attraction for cinephiles, the film kicks off with married filmmakers Chris (Vicky Krieps) and Tony (a snidely amusing Tim Roth) arriving at the remote Swedish town for a summer retreat. There’s a telling aura that something is amiss in their relationship; more distanced than affectionate, it feels like the final days of a relationship that had long meant to end; there’s a polite, but awkward mutual friendliness that exudes between them.
Tony is the more successful of the two, having been invited to screen a movie of his and give a Q&A. Chris, suffering from writer’s block, wants to soak up the Bergman setting and find inspiration for a new screenplay. Krieps, best known for her ferocious acting in “Phantom Thread,” delivers an exquisitely simple yet profound performance here, maybe her best one yet. She’s magnetic in every scene.
And so, Bergman sites are visited, his films name-checked in too many scenes to mention, hell, our couple even sleeps in the same bedroom where Bergman shot “Scenes from a Marriage” a film which, as their tour guide so aptly describes, was responsible for millions of divorces. But apart from that, Tony and Chris drift into their own head spaces, choosing to do their own outdoor activities separately.
It’s only when Chris starts running ideas about a possible new screenplay through Tony that Hansen-Løve does a switcheroo to her narrative and gives us a film within a film. This one about East coast filmmaker Amy (Mia Wasikowska) who travels to Fårö for a friend’s wedding and as a final attempt to reconnect with invitee Joseph, her man who got away (Anders Danielsen Lie). There and then we are swept away both parallel stories about crushed up love. Both stories in need of an ending.
Many movies have failed with going for such a parallel narrative, usually there’s one story that ends up being stronger than the other, but in “Bergman Island” you’re equally invested in both. Wasikowska is phenomenal as a woman torn between what could have been and what should have been — wait until you watch her dance to Abba on the dance floor in the film’s most gloriously uplifting scene.
But, ironically, much like Chris, Hansen-Løve can’t seem to find the right ending for her movie. The setup is intriguing, effervescent and damn-near dreamy until it all collapses under its own weight in the last 10 or so minutes. Alas, this semi-autobiographical, and therapeutic, account of Hansen-Løve’s romantic disillusionment, shot in 2.39:1, centered at maximum width for crucial dramatic effect, has a lyrical sensibility and meditative approach that the French filmmaker hasn’t been able to nail until now. [B+]