Bergman Island

Perhaps the most straightforwardly enjoyable and accessible of Mia (Eden, Things to Come) Hansen-Løve’s films to date follows a creative couple of filmmakers, Tony and Chris (not to be read as stand-ins for MH-L and Olivier Assayas by all accounts, though the film is resolutely concerned with the dynamics of creative couple-dom), en route to Fårö, the small Swedish island made famous by Ingmar Bergman (and which now seems to be something of a Bergman theme park!), where they plan to spend a summer writing, in the very house where the great man once made Scenes from a Marriage…

Seeing the funny side of Bergman idolatry whilst also lapping it up, is just one of the ways in which the film wants its cake and eats it, and this viewer, for one, was more than happy to let it. As Chris’ writer’s block clears, the film we are watching gives way to the film she ends up making, in which she is able to fictionalise an honesty and passion in her surrogate that may escape her in real life…

“If it’s a cinephile shell game made with disarmingly clever sincerity — and I would say that’s just what it is — it’s one that leaves you grateful to have paid a visit to this island.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety