Movie Review: 'Bergman Island' Starring Vicky Krieps

Bergman Island stars Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth as a couple of married filmmakers who travel to Sweden, and to Faro Island, the spiritual and actual home of the legendary filmmaker, Ingmar Bergman. Bergman filmed his most celebrated films on Faro Island, including Scenes from A Marriage. In fact, our main characters, Chris and Tony, are ominously staying in the very home in which the famed movie that launched a thousand divorces was shot.

It is here in this immaculate location, bursting with cinematic inspiration and history, that both husband and wife will attempt to put the finishing touches on their latest screenplays. Tony is also on hand to participate in a screening of one his own films, a panel on Bergman’s legendary work, and a tour of the island called the Bergman Safari that takes participants all over the island to Bergman’s most beloved settings, actual locations from his films.

Chris also loves Bergman but she holds his work at more of a distance than Tony. Bergman’s art makes her sad in a way she can’t quite put to words. This feeling will plague her as she launches into the writing, rewriting and frustrated re-re-writing of her story about a female filmmaker who travels to this same island for what may be her last meeting with the great love of her life. This story within the story comes to life for us as Chris tells her story to Tony in hope of finding a proper ending for her story.

As Chris lays out her story to a sanguine and slightly distracted Tony, we see the character of Amy come to life in the form of Mia Wasikowska. Amy is coming to Faro Island for the wedding of a friend but also because Joseph, played by Anders Danielson, is also coming to the wedding. The two met as teenagers, fell in love, fell apart, came back together, and fell out again. Now, Amy has a child and perhaps a husband back home while Joseph has a girlfriend he loves but is unfaithful to.

How this story plays out is a lovely, tender, seductive and sad tale. I won’t spoil it with any further description, just know that everything that happens is beautiful, alluring, poignant and worth paying to see for yourself. Amy longs for Joseph in a way that female characters in movies are rarely allowed. Her feelings are taken seriously but she’s not lashing out, she’s not, in the typical Hollywood sense, bitter. She’s resigned to her loss and despairing. Mia Wasikowska is wonderful in this movie within the movie and it’s refreshing to see a jealous woman not treated as some kind of monster as so often happens in American feature films.

Director Mia Hansen-Love directs Bergman Island with a delicate sensitivity that leaves room for larger emotions but doesn’t linger on them. It’s a more cerebral kind of sadness that plagues both Chris and, by extension, Amy, through whom Chris is working through something we are never fully made aware of. Did Chris have a lover that she longed for before Tony, or while with Tony? It’s not clear but as the lines between the real world of Chris’s life with Tony and her story about Amy and Joseph begin to blur, you can sense how personal this story is for Chris even as the movie doesn’t go out of its way to explain everything or underline every parallel.

Tim Roth isn’t given much to play but I enjoyed his performance nevertheless. Tony could have been a series of great man clichés, an egotist lording his success over his wife but that’s not what happens. Tony is a loving and supportive husband, a little self-involved as any writer and artist tends to be, but not a monster. Tony serves the story well as a sounding board for Chris, a jumping off point for her inner explorations. Many actors in Roth’s position might choose to overplay for attention but Roth plays Tony straight, as a more confident and self assured artist but one who cares about his wife.

Is Bergman Island Bergman-esque? Perhaps a little, but far less on the bitter side. In fact, some of the sweeter moments of Bergman Island could play as a minor critique of the great master and his taste for the more macabre side of male female relations. Where Bergman is heartsick and bitter, Mia Hansen-Love is thoughtful and observant. She’s certainly capable of showing heartache, as we see from Amy in her darker moments, but Bergman Island is more interested in exploring the emotional side of creativity than it is in trying to make grand statements about the nature of man, sex, love and faith.

All of those aspects are there in Bergman Island but the exploration of those ideas are through the lens of a creator, someone who must channel those ideas through their own mind and experiences. In that way, Bergman Island is more about cinema than it is about the kind of emotional truth that Bergman sought to explore, dissect and lay bare. Both approaches work for me as I love both Bergman and Bergman Island.

Bergman Island opens in limited theatrical release via IFC Films on October 15th. By the way, if you'd like to help pay for my personal dream trip to Faro Island, be sure to leave a tip below. It's now my absolute goal and dream in life to take the Bergman Safari but I can only do that with a little bit of help.