Starring: Vicky Krieps, Tim Roth, Mia Wasikowska, Anders Danielsen Lie, Hampus Nordenson
Distributor: Umbrella Entertainment
Runtime: 113 mins. Reviewed in Mar 2022
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan
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This subtitled, multiple-nation movie tells the story of a married couple, who travel to an Island in Sweden where they work on the screenplays of their next film projects. The island they choose was the home of the famous film director, Ingmar Bergman, which gives the movie its title.
This is a dramatic, English-speaking film from Belgium, France, Germany and Sweden that tells the story of a professional, married couple – seasoned writer-director, Tony Sanders (Roth), and his far younger wife, Chris (Krieps). They travel to Faro, an island in Sweden, that was the home of Ingmar Bergman. There, they work on film screenplays, and they are both looking a little differently for artistic inspiration from the home of Ingmar Bergman.
Tony reveres Ingmar Bergman, and loves the island of Faro. Chris is not so sure. Their marriage is beginning to demonstrate conflict, but their relationship is invigorated by a mutual appreciation of film and the art of film-making. In particular, they are both inspired by Bergman’s life and work. Chris loves Bergman’s movies, and she has a deep fascination with his work, but feels strongly about the way Bergman treated women in his life. She can’t reconcile Bergman’s acknowledged importance with the fact he had nine children by six different women.
Faro Island, in the Baltic Sea, is where Ingmar Bergman shot most of his celebrated films. The Island supplied the scenes for his Scenes from a Marriage (1974), and Through a Glass Darkly (1961), for example. Because Tony and Chris travel to Faro to inspire their future work, the island assumes central importance in the film.
At a question-and-answer screening of a film by Tony, Chris sneaks away, and goes off to a church-graveyard where Ingmar Bergman is buried. She accepts an offer by a Swedish film student, Hampus (Hampus Nordenson) to explore the Island. Back at her desk, she works on a screenplay, in which Amy (Mia Wasikowska), the heroine of her new script, has an affair with Joseph (Anders Danielson Lie). The imagined relationship between Amy and Joseph is volatile – they are deeply attracted to each other, but other people are implicated. In these, and other ways, Chris’s screenplay is linked cleverly with real life. Amy and Joseph express desires that are compellingly captured in a movie being planned by Chris, and love and betrayal are involved.
Bergman Island supplies the background to imaginary happenings, where the line between fiction and reality intentionally blurs, and the film oscillates between fantasy and reality. The movie offers a commentary on the creative process between art and film-making, and throws light on the dynamics of the partnerships between actors and artists. This is a meditative movie, that reaches to explore the associations between cinematic art, love, and betrayal. It intelligently and provocatively explores the complexities that exist among human intimacy, human frailty, art, and real life.
Hansen-Love directs her film like an ode to the passage of time, where the passage of years affects what we ask from ourselves, and those we are attached to. The film is effectively a movie within a movie, as it travels back and forth between reality and imaginative occurrences. And anchoring it all is the magnificent scenery of Faro.
This is a film that draws inspiration from the creative process of film-making, the joy of positive human connections, and the sadness of human relationships gone wrong. The film’s parallel storylines, and its various themes work creatively to glue the film well together, and everything occurs within the overarching influence of Ingmar Bergman and his beloved island, Faro.
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