Bergman Island – first-look review

I flew to Paris in 2019 to inter­view the French film­mak­er Mia Hansen-Løve about her auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal 2011 film, Good­bye First Love, which cov­ers over a decade in the life of Camille (Lola Créton).

When the film opens she is a 15-year-old school­girl obses­sive­ly in love with her 19-year-old boyfriend Sul­li­van (Sebas­t­ian Urzen­dowsky). He loves her but is rest­less to leave Paris in order to trav­el around South Amer­i­ca, and ends up break­ing up with her by let­ter. Years pass. Camille becomes an archi­tect. She enters a rela­tion­ship with a very dif­fer­ent type of man in his for­ties, who cher­ish­es her. She cuts her hair short. She lives. Many years lat­er, as if it was the most nat­ur­al thing in the world, Sul­li­van returns. Their pas­sion rekin­dles like dry wood meet­ing a naked flame. Bliss fol­lows until Sul­li­van breaks up with her by let­ter again.

Hansen-Løve has owned that the sto­ry is trans­posed from her expe­ri­ences, so I asked if Good­bye First Love was a com­mu­ni­ca­tion with her Sul­li­van. She said, ​“Think of that ques­tion when you see Bergman Island, because it is a lit­tle bit of an answer. Bergman Island is the last chap­ter to Good­bye First Love.”

So, I watched the film look­ing for my answer, which took awhile to rise up out of its docu-real­is­tic set-up. Chris (Vicky Krieps) and Tony (Tim Roth) are a film­mak­er cou­ple who trav­el to Fårö, the Swedish island where Ing­mar Bergman lived and shot some of his most famous films: Per­sona, Through a Glass Dark­ly, Shame and Scenes From a Mar­riage. When we meet Chris and Tony they are on the plane that will lead them to a car, that will lead them to a boat, that will take them to Fårö where they are stay­ing as artists in res­i­dence. Touch­es, like Tony giv­ing Chris his sun­glass­es after she dis­cov­ers hers are lost, show the ten­der bond that the cou­ple share.

This bond is test­ed after they arrive on Bergman Island and are shown around their tem­po­rary home which, their host tells them, is where Bergman shot Scenes From a Mar­riage, a film respon­si­ble for ​“mil­lions of divorces”. The ten­sion intro­duced by this loaded set­ting is quick­ly born out as Chris and Tony are pulled in dif­fer­ent direc­tions: he towards pub­lic-fac­ing duties at the Bergman Cen­tre where he intro­duces his films, does pan­els and gen­er­al­ly plays the role of vis­it­ing lumi­nary; while she is free to go her own way, accept­ing an invi­ta­tion from a young stu­dent, Ham­pus (Ham­pus Nor­den­son), to have a per­son­al tour of the island, com­plete with swigs of local cider. The duo end up hav­ing a jel­ly­fish fight in the sum­mer sea in one ludi­crous­ly joy­ful scene.

I have vis­it­ed Fårö, a serene yet bizarre place where there are more fields than peo­ple (pop­u­la­tion 505 at the time of my vis­it). Bergman’s ghost hangs over the island – a mild­ly oppres­sive pres­ence that jars with the sparkling lakes and pic­turesque wind­mills that whizz past as you trav­el the roads by car or bike. There are rumours of Bergman’s ghost switch­ing on lights. The land­scape of the island is inex­tri­ca­bly linked to his films, like the peb­ble beach sur­round­ed by rugged rocks where Liv Ull­mann and Bibi Ander­s­son had it out in Persona.

The film tus­sles with the dis­crep­an­cy between the rev­er­ence afford­ed to Bergman’s sta­tus as an artist and his neglect­ful domes­tic con­duct. (He had nine chil­dren from six women and was not inter­est­ed in being a father.) This frus­trates Chris who likes there to be ​“coher­ence” between film and film­mak­er and she grills a rel­a­tive­ly untrou­bled Tony. Hansen-Løve threads in an explo­ration of what it looks like to find mean­ing in films, and the com­plex­i­ty of our paraso­cial inti­ma­cy with film­mak­ers whose work moves us.

Krieps is sparky and ele­gant while Roth is earnest and humor­ous. Their rela­tion­ship is pre­sent­ed with­out expo­si­tion. They express them­selves blunt­ly, secure in each other’s matu­ri­ty, even as notes of dis­cord creep in. Adding to this is the fact that Tony’s scriptwrit­ing is going swim­ming­ly – and he is secre­tive about its con­tents – while Chris is stumped by how to end her script and wants to talk it through.

And so we come to the film-with­in-the-film, the emo­tion­al core of this movie and the answer I was seek­ing. As Chris nar­rates to Tony, her words come to life enact­ed by Mia Wasikows­ka and Anders Danielsen Lie. They are Amy and Joseph, estranged lovers thrown togeth­er for three days for a friend’s wed­ding hap­pen­ing in Fårö. Their back­sto­ry is lift­ed from the events of Good­bye First Love. It has been years since that time­line end­ed. Both are with new part­ners. Amy has a young daugh­ter, just like Chris and just like Mia Hansen-Løve.

The way this sec­tion hit me was hope­less­ly per­son­al. I watched the reunion of Amy/​Camille/​Mia and Joseph/​Sullivan/​Mr X imag­in­ing how I would nav­i­gate my own impos­si­ble love if we were locked into inti­mate prox­im­i­ty again. Wasikows­ka and Danielsen Lie deliv­er extra­or­di­nar­i­ly lay­ered per­for­mances, chan­nelling the famil­iar­i­ty of peo­ple who have already lived a major sto­ry togeth­er, along with the painful knowl­edge that this sto­ry is done. Yet their chem­istry lingers. The clos­er they get – over danc­ing and a beach sauna and swim­ming – the less the hard-won knowl­edge counts and the more basic instincts take over.

Sex­u­al heat is well-earned after the breezy inci­den­tal nar­ra­tive of Chris and Tony which now takes on a new light and mean­ing. Bergman Island is to Good­bye First Love what Joan­na Hogg’s The Sou­venir Part II is to The Sou­venir. Both first films were auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal odes to unre­strained pas­sion, with all its atten­dant hurt, while both sequels ring the pro­gres­sion as female film­mak­ers step into their work, instead over an emo­tion­al precipice.

Anoth­er ques­tion I asked Mia Hansen-Løve in 2019: ​“Do you think you’re safe from impos­si­ble love now?” She answered: ​“Ha, I don’t know about that! You do change and that’s good because if life was just a rep­e­ti­tion of the same thing over and over it would be either bor­ing or make you crazy. I’m not the kind of per­son who would say defin­i­tive things about my future or my feel­ings. Nobody is real­ly ever. Well, maybe some peo­ple are, but I don’t think I will ever be pro­tect­ed against suf­fer­ing or feel­ing – and I don’t want to be. But at least I wouldn’t react exact­ly the same way now, or go into the same dead end.”

At a cer­tain point, Chris wor­ries that she is telling the same sto­ry over and over again. Tony says the sto­ry may stay the same but her per­spec­tive in the telling of it changes. The answer I took in the end is that this is a com­mu­ni­ca­tion with her Sul­li­van, but it’s also a com­mu­ni­ca­tion with cin­e­ma his­to­ry and peo­ple like me.

In my favourite scene, Amy dances to ​‘The Win­ner Takes It All’ by Swedish icons ABBA. She dances with a friend but she is danc­ing for Joseph who she knows is watch­ing. High on the plea­sure of mov­ing her body, the uptem­po music and the heat of his gaze, the mood is ecsta­t­ic until she looks back to the place where he was stand­ing by the bar. The cam­era cuts to an emp­ty space. Plea­sure drains out of the mood. This is exact­ly how it feels to love some­one who doesn’t love you in the right way. I need­ed to be remind­ed of that.