Contemporary 2021 Selection: Bergman Island (2021)

 Mia Hansen-Love's "Bergman Island"


Mia Hansen-Love's "Bergman Island" stars Vicky Kreips, who plays Chris, a stand-in for Hansen-Love herself. The story is about two American filmmakers who retreat to the island of Faro for the summer. Faro is the island where Ingmar Bergman lived and shot many of his films. Chris is suffering from writer's block and is attempting to use inspiration from the island to write her next film.

The story becomes semi-autobiographical, as Hansen-Love illustrates with acute subtlety the dissolving relationship with her then-partner, Olivier Assayas. The stand-in for Assayas, Tim Roth's character Tony, is distributing his film to a local audience. All the while, the two character become distracted away from each other, as Chris continues to find ways to be disconnected from her partner. Not only this, they are trying to scribe their next projects. Tony seems to have no problem, as he draws inspiration from Bergman's fear that his home was haunted by the ghost of his dead wife. However, Chris seems haunted by a different ghost story entirely, the ghost of Bergman's career. Chris comes up with a story, as Hansen-Love starts to enact Chris's story for the viewer. Eventually the viewer becomes so connected to the other story that it becomes apparent that the two stories share distinctive similarities. With the reconciliation of the two stories, it becomes apparent to the viewer and to Chris that she should write about what is happening around her. Hansen-Love seems to collide the two stories by the very end, allowing for what is fact and what is fiction to become all the same. With this, Hansen-Love is saying through the many layers of her story that the fabrication of art itself hold a personal truth inside of it. The viewers reconciliation of the two stories makes you realize how much the artistic fake story is deeply influenced by the real story of Chris. And with this, the viewer realizes how much the artistic fake story of Chris is influenced by Hansen-Love herself. 

With "Bergman Island," Hansen-Love lays out the fabric of what art holds. In the film, Chris asks Tony why Bergman's films were all about dark subject matters and muses why he couldn't make 'happier' films. Tony's responce was that he wanted to make things about what interested him. With this film, Hansen-Love resdiscovers her own artistic drive and realizes that no artist is different. In order to make a great film, it must be about yourself. 




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