Bergman Island review – warm and witty scenes from a marriage

As a couple – both filmmakers – drive up to the remote island house where Ingmar Bergman shot Scenes from a Marriage, the miniseries that supposedly inspired millions of Swedes to divorce, you might think you know how Bergman Island is going to play out. The obvious route would be an explosive marriage breakdown, spurred by the “curse of creativity,” but writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve is far too smart for that. Instead, Bergman Island unfolds as a quieter and wittier rumination on how stories both enrich and steal from the lives of both the tellers and their audience.

The couple in question are Chris (Vicky Krieps) and Tony (Tim Roth), both writer-directors, though it’s Tony, a Bergman expert who seems to make “elevated” horrors, who is currently enjoying greater success. Refreshingly, this career disparity isn’t played for any sort of dramatic resentment – instead we’re invited inside a very sturdy marriage that has maybe lost some spark, but is still a source of comfort and joy for its inhabitants. Krieps and Roth both put in exceptional, subtle work, and their casual chemistry is a delight –  you never doubt for a second that this is a tried-and-true relationship, testament to both the performances and Hansen-Løve’s insightful, perfectly observed writing.

Chris and Tony are on Bergman’s home island of Faro on a joint writers’ retreat, hoping to finish their scripts whilst gaining an insight into what drove one of the most austere filmmakers of all time. Though it’s Tony who is the star of the show at the start, Hansen-Løve spends more time in Chris’s head, as she strikes up a friendship with a local film student and starts to shape her script into a film that we get to see play out as she thinks it up.

This story, a younger and more passionate (but far less stable) romance, is shown to us as Chris thinks it up, following young American director Amy (Mia Wasikowska) at a destination wedding on Faro, where she runs into her Norwegian old flame Joseph (Anders Danielsen Lie). It’s sexier and more melodramatic than the real-world story, these fiction-in-fiction characters more likely to find joy in ABBA than Bergman, but Hansen-Løve finds clever ways to mingle the two strands, until the gaps between fact and fiction start to blur, and maybe even disappear completely.

As the very open-to-interpretation ending arrives, Bergman Island is too emotionally muted to really hit you with a gut punch, but it’s so smartly constructed that its absence isn’t a huge issue. Hansen-Løve puts intelligent and funny dialogue in the hands of expert actors, surrounds them with softly-photographed natural beauty, and sets the whole thing to a wonderful soundtrack that feels as though it’s been plucked from the local environment itself. A meta-on-meta turn towards the end may prove divisive, but surrender to the gentle rhythms on offer here and you will find yourself transported, bearing witness to the creative processes of one of the most believable screen couples in years.

Bergman Island was screened as part of the BFI London Film Festival 2021. It is released in UK cinemas on 3 June.