Bergman Island

Few films show so much dis­dain for men as Bergman Island. Set on the Swedish island of Fårö where Ing­mar Bergman lived, Mia Hansen-Løve uses the frame­work of a couple’s work­ing hol­i­day to dis­sect the direc­to­r­i­al titan and his noto­ri­ous per­son­al life. So snide is Hansen-Løve’s cri­tique that male audi­ences will like­ly watch the film bliss­ful­ly unaware of its sub­tle decon­struc­tion of mas­cu­line behav­iour and the patri­ar­chal social sys­tem that enables it.

Ing­mar Bergman was the epit­o­me of this male type. As illu­mi­nat­ed in Linn Ullmann’s mag­nif­i­cent qua­si-mem­oir ​‘Unqui­et’ about her rela­tion­ship with her father, Bergman believed he could treat women how­ev­er he saw fit. That’s not to say Bergman didn’t love women – he real­ly, real­ly did – but that his desires always came first.

The chal­lenges of monogamy – or rather monoamory – have long plagued Hansen-Løve’s cin­e­ma. In her films it is a prob­lem for men like Vic­tor in All is For­giv­en (2007), and for women, such as Camille in Good­bye First Love (2011). In Bergman Island, Amy (Mia Wasikows­ka) tells Joseph (Anders Danielsen Lie) that she is dif­fer­ent from him because she loves two peo­ple, while he mere­ly has sex with mul­ti­ple partners.

Giv­en that their dia­logue is the fab­ri­ca­tion of Chris (Vicky Krieps), there is a lev­el of fan­ta­sis­ing to this exchange. Her hus­band, Tony (Tim Roth), is a direc­tor of indie hor­ror flicks who gives great import to his finan­cial­ly suc­cess­ful but uno­rig­i­nal projects. He aligns him­self to the twist­ed side of Bergman’s psy­che, a fan of intense psy­chodra­mas such as Per­sona and Cries & Whispers.

Chris, on the oth­er hand, prefers Bergman’s more roman­tic mode – think Sum­mer With Moni­ka or Fan­ny and Alexan­der. A screen­writer her­self, she aligns her taste more with the char­ac­ter-dri­ven style of Bergman’s talkies. Unlike Tony, she is hes­i­tant to sleep in the bed from Scenes From a Mar­riage or write at Bergman’s desk. The film she wants to make, shown in par­al­lel dur­ing Bergman Island’s sec­ond act, is essen­tial­ly a Hansen-Løve film with­in a Hansen-Løve film.

Fårö becomes a site of spec­u­la­tion, just as it was for Bergman. After hear­ing about Bergman’s sequence of wives and lovers, Chris rumi­nates on the nature of mar­riage and fideli­ty. She for­goes the tourist-trap ​‘Bergman Safari’ to explore the island instead with a hand­some young stu­dent she meets at the gift shop. There she buys the sun­glass­es Bibi Ander­s­son wore in Per­sona, a film about split per­son­al­i­ties and the exis­ten­tial cri­sis of lives lived and lost.

This makes Bergman Island sound deeply philo­soph­i­cal and impen­e­tra­ble. But Hansen-Løve always keeps Bergman’s own cin­e­mat­ic trap­pings at arm’s length. She is respect­ful of Bergman’s lega­cy while also mock­ing. There is an ele­ment of truth to Joel Spira’s ​“fuck Bergman” mono­logue, and when a stu­dent mansplains to the female tour­guide that Shame was released in the UK with a def­i­nite arti­cle, one can­not help but explode into know­ing laughter.

Hansen-Løve allows her­self one Bergmanesque oneir­ic moment in the film – a burst of Mahler, a thun­der­ous tick­ing clock, chimes, and a flash­for­ward in time. It’s beau­ti­ful­ly exe­cut­ed, and rep­re­sents the fur­thest Hansen-Løve has strayed from real­ism in her career. The play with nar­ra­tive here shows her to be at her most assured as a film­mak­er, will­ing to take risks in new direc­tions. Rather than an attempt at direc­to­r­i­al mim­ic­ry, Bergman Island is a unique vision from one of the great­est direc­tors work­ing today.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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