A female director (Vicky Krieps), in a relationship with an older film-maker (Tim Roth), spends time at a creative retreat on the island of Faro in the Baltic Sea, famously the home and workplace of Ingmar Bergman. There she develops an idea about a young woman (played by Mia Wasikowska, in a beguiling film within the film), also a film-maker, visiting Faro for a wedding and reconnecting with her former lover (Anders Danielsen Lie).
Factor in the autobiographical element – Bergman Island’s writer-director, Mia Hansen-Løve, was herself in a relationship with an older film-maker, Olivier Assayas – and the story starts to feel like a refracting prism in its overlap of characters and creator. In the hands of Hansen-Løve, it’s a delicate millefeuille, layering story upon story, character upon character, until it’s hard to peel them apart.
Krieps’s character, Chris, approaches storytelling in a manner that is inquisitive and engaged; she questions and explores. It seems likely that Hansen-Løve takes the same route: Bergman Island has a languid, meandering pace and a plot that is governed by chance encounters and discoveries.
The score, a delicate motif crafted from the unlikely combination of harp, recorders and bagpipes, captures the slightly unconventional beauty of the island. But it’s a location Chris chafes against: “All this calm and perfection, I find it oppressive.” Likewise, she is disappointed by what she learns of Bergman himself. With the “Bergman safari” and its competitive cineastes staking personal claims to the great man’s work, Hansen-Løve gently pokes fun at the reverence for an overbearing auteur, and instead allows her women to drive the story.
