BERGMAN ISLAND

 The title hints at something gloomy or perhaps a documentary but then we know Mia Hansen-Love isn't inclined towards either documentaries or gloominess and this beautiful movie, filmed in English and set on the island where Bergman lived and worked, comes across as her love letter both to the place and the director. Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth are the couple who go to "Bergman Island", (Faro), one summer for what might be described as a working holiday.

She's a writer who hopes that living and working in Bergman's home will influence her creativity and yet is afraid to sleep in the bed Bergman used in "Scenes from a Marriage" and who finds all the beauty around her depressing. He's a director of horror films, there to work on a new screenplay and because one of his films is being screened. Early on we feel this may be an anti-love story.

Of course, this is also Hansen-Love's movie about the movies in general as well as about Bergman. Our protagonists spend hours talking about and analysing the director who is like a ghost between them; he's everywhere and every waking moment seems to be about honoring the maestro. It's as if the island exists only as an extension of Bergman..

Then, about the half-way mark, Krieps starts to tell Roth the plot of a story she's writing and which she hopes will make a good film and we see this acted out. This film within the film is about a female film-maker, (Mia Wasikowska), who has made a film about her own life and loves and who has come to Faro for a wedding and is now rekindling that old passion with her former lover, (Anders Danielsen Lie), and with Abba on the soundtrack.

Unfortunately the two halves don't quite gel. Krieps' story with Wasikowska is rather trite and it takes a reversal back to the original story for the film to give us its final, glorious kick as the two films merge and some of the actors blend into their characters. It's a smart move and the least Bergman thing about the film, a triumph finally, not for the gloomy maestro, but for Hansen-Love.