It is perhaps the most cinephile film in Cannes. Bergman Island by Mia Hasnen-Love, presented in competition at Cannes, takes a couple of filmmakers in search of inspiration to the wild and isolated island of Faro, in the Baltic Sea.
Tim Roth and Mia Hansen-Love, actor and director of the exotic #BergmanIsland @Festival_Cannes @panciutello @films_dulosange pic.twitter.com/69nbXZVG5v
– Vié Caroline (@Caroklouk) July 12, 2021
What is special about this little paradise for moviegoers? This is where Ingmar Bergman lived and turned. A major influence for the famous but aging director played by Tim Roth, it is less obvious to his young companion at the start of her career played by Vicky Krieps (the revelation of the Phantom Thread by Paul Thomas Anderson).
An amusement park for cinephiles
“The film has its place in Cannes because it is a cry of love in the cinema, confides Tim Roth to 20 minutes. The heroes hope that Bergman’s genius will rub off on them if they soak up the atmosphere of the place. »Mia Hansen-Love has made several trips there, which allows the viewer to visit the most beautiful places on the island. Its heroes are tossed between creative introspection and plunged into full fiction watched by the shadow of the Swedish master. “It’s a place that makes you want to believe in ghosts,” says Mia Hansen-Love, and a place of pilgrimage for moviegoers around the world. “
On this island supposed to favor romantic breakups since Scenes of married life (1973), a major work by Bergman, would have “divorced millions of people”, the couple, which was first united, broke up between against a background of professional rivalry. “Mia encouraged us to improvise,” remembers Tim Roth. She asked us to be totally natural, to forget that we were playing. This is what is more difficult for actors to do than to create characters deep inside. “
Between reality and fiction
While the hero visits the high places of Bergman on the island, his wife writes a melancholy love story that a duo played by Mia Wasikowska and Daniel Andersen Lee lives in parallel. “He has several films in one, insists Tim Roth and it is sometimes difficult to disentangle what is true or false. This cloudy line between reality and fiction contributes largely to the delicate charm of a film that does not lack humor.
We smile when some inhabitants of Faro, tired of repeated questions about Ingmar Bergman, pretend never to have heard of him or get angry red when the name of the director is mentioned. “I would like the island to remain a preserved place, but also for my film to bring in tourists because that would mean that it has found its audience”, laughs Mia Hansen-Love. Could we qualify this dilemma as Bergmanian?