Reality is often much stranger than fiction, which is an adage that no one seems to know better than Mia Hansen-Løve, who has steadily ascended to the status of being one of the most fascinating and essential voices in contemporary European cinema. Her English-language debut is Bergman Island, which (as the title suggests) takes place entirely on the island of Fårö, known to have been the home to the esteemed cinematic iconoclast Ingmar Bergman, who spent much of his life on this small, isolated utopia, which served as his source of inspiration for much of his life. Hansen-Løve uses this location as the setting for one of the most heartwrenching but beautiful romantic dramas, which serves as a semi-autobiographical account of the years she spent tethered to Olivier Assayas, another iconic voice in modern cinema, with whom she had a professional and personal relationship for well over a decade before their eventual separation. An intimate but powerful character study that uses surrogates for the director and her former partner to tell an evocative, compassionate story about the boundary at which life ends and the artistic process begins, as well as a poignant love letter to one of the greatest artists of the past century, Bergman Island is an essential work, a dynamic and often endearingly funny portrait of a relationship that is forced to endure many obstacles, but one where the resolution isn’t whether they will be able to overcome these challenges, but rather what will happen if either of them makes the fateful discovery that there is more to life than a relationship that grows more strained and dysfunctional as the years go on, and the problems that lurk below the surface begin to appear.

Like many works designed around a director’s own experiences, Bergman Island is a work of incredible catharsis, with Hansen-Løve using this film as an opportunity to explore her own experiences as not only a young filmmaker who was in a relationship with someone that attained a much higher level of acclaim and fame (at least in terms of when this film would be taking place in comparison to their relationship). In many cases, the process of using art as an opportunity to work through personal quandaries isn’t all that alluring, especially since its more common to find that they’re gaudy and heavy-handed, and often resort to the most needlessly petty deconstructions that are more likely one-sided than they are nuanced. Bergman Island is radically different – Hansen-Løve is placing herself outside the confines of the relationship that inspired the film, observing her own life as if she was a voyeur, peering into the trials and tribulations of this partnership that seems idealistic at first, but is gradually revealed to have a few shortcomings that eventually grow into indelible flaws, from which there isn’t much recovery. In theory, Bergman Island should not be as poetic as it is, since it’s not common to find someone capable of pulling apart the layers of their own life, especially one centred on a long-term relationship that occupied a considerable amount of the creator’s life – yet, as we’ve seen on many occasions, Hansen-Løve is not someone whose artistic vision should ever be underestimated, since she has previously proven that she has a firm grasp not only of her craft, but also the collective cultural pulse, which she infuses into every vibrant frame of her masterful directorial efforts that always stand as some of the best films of their respective years.

Bergman Island has many themes sewn into its fabric, but the best way to approach it would be to consider it as a film about romance in different forms. Love is a subject that cinema has never been shy to portray, and Hansen-Løve is making sure that she’s representing a variety of different concepts under this extremely broad subject. Logically, the film is a story of two people venturing to a distant island, where they believe their strong marriage and undying devotion for each other will help them pass the lonely days of nearly complete isolation (and which is the aspect on which the film’s more heartbreaking commentary is dependent). However, despite being the central theme, this kind of love is also the least interesting, since Hansen-Løve is much more invested in exploring the romanticizing of the artistic process, the film taking place in and around the locations that Bergman used to craft many of his masterpieces, and which serves as a sanctuary for artistic nourishment, where many individuals go to gain inspiration for works they know will likely never rival what their idol did, but are never discouraged from at least trying to sample from being in close proximity to Bergman himself, whose spirit lingers like a spectre over the entire film, almost as if the long-deceased director is suddenly going to enter the film as an apparition, the result of the film’s deep and undying reverence to the filmmaker, which is the cerebral side of the film. Then there is the heart of Bergman Island, which is the love for oneself – the film is about finding yourself and learning how to be independent, free from the shackles of others’ opinions, and where one can gleefully just venture throughout the world – and like arguably her finest film, Things to Come, Hansen-Løve manages to portray this vitally important theme, that of self-love, in every frame of this beautiful and striking film.

Hansen-Løve often brings out the very best in her actors, and Bergman Island is not an exception, as she assigns a small but strong ensemble to portray these characters. The two leads of the film are Tim Roth, who is giving one of his most subdued and nuanced performances in years (even if there is something quite off-kilter about his character, likely an intentional choice to make Tony aloof without being entirely unlikeable), and Vicky Krieps, who has spent the past few years steadily building a strong body of work, having collaborated with several vitally important filmmakers that have all managed to see something special lurking beneath the surface of this promising actress who continues to stun. To say that Krieps was a revelation here seems inappropriate, since even prior to her mainstream breakthrough with Phantom Thread, she had a large collection of incredible performances. Bergman Island affords her the opportunity to play a more quiet and nuanced character, albeit one that is never anything less than riveting, her screen presence being utterly captivating and always enticing, which essentially helps define the film. Supporting roles are occupied by Mia Wasikowska (who also has accumulated a strong body of work, but where she is rarely given particularly great characters to play), and Anders Danielsen Lie, the latter managing to steal every scene he is in through his brooding charisma and unexpected depth that he brings to an intentionally one-dimensional character. Interestingly, Wasikowska and Danielsen Lie are playing both fictional characters, and surrogates for Roth and Krieps, who are in turn based on Assayas and Hansen-Løve respectively, one of the many captivating layers that go into this film’s creation – and while it may seem like the director is just using this as a way to convey her experience, there is a lot of complex storytelling that goes into the creation of these characters.

Everything about Bergman Island, whether it be the story or the characters that occupy this world, ultimately circles back to Hansen-Løve, which is entirely understandable, as this film is her way of working through a difficult relationship, many of the aspects of the film being drawn from her own personal life. However, she is far too gifted a filmmaker to just concoct a simple story that sees her transposing her experiences directly onto a set of characters who are thinly-veiled surrogates from real individuals. Instead, she uses this platform as an opportunity to put together one of the most layered and compelling works of metafictional filmmaking produced in over a decade. It doesn’t take too much effort to figure out how many layers of commentary were used to create this film – just a basic knowledge of the director’s life, both professionally and personally, will equip any viewer with the information necessary to spot the small intertextual references and details that are taken from her own life, intermingling with a highly fictionalized version of the final breaths of her relationship with Assayas, which manifests as the central dramatic impetus for the film as a whole. Combined with the utterly gorgeous filmmaking (cinematographer Denis Lenoir, one of the director’s regular collaborators captures Fårö with stunning precision) and the easygoing, carefree tone that hints at much deeper narrative depths, Bergman Island manages to become such a riveting and enthralling piece of filmmaking, being what appears to be a therapeutic excursion into the director’s mind as she carefully pulls apart the layers of the past. The sheer amount of catharsis the audience feels, whether it be from the central storyline, or the eventual secondary “film-within-a-film” narrative, is only a brief indication of the depths to which Hansen-Løve is willing to venture to explore this particular story.

One of the finest aspects of Bergman Island is the fact that it is so easy to get lost in this world. Much of the film takes a very liberal approach to following the characters aimlessly wandering through this idyllic landscape, discovering new details, in a way that suggests that Hansen-Løve was modelling this story as something of a magical realist parable, the story of a couple that enters an island distant from anywhere they have been before, and where they eventually are forced to address deep-seated tensions that continuously manifest the more time they spend on this island. It’s a simple film, but one that is effortlessly evocative, each moment more revealing and scintillating than the last – and it accomplishes the rare feat of being an autobiographical work that doesn’t have a hint of unnecessary sensationalism or overwrought approach to its storytelling (even at its most heartwrenching), each emotion feeling perfectly calibrated to the message of the film. This is very likely due to Hansen-Løve modelling these characters on people from her real life, but stepping away far enough to look at it from a distance, making sure that there isn’t any unneeded animosity or tension that doesn’t culminate in anything meaningful. It’s a tremendously moving, and frequently quite funny film with a lot of heart and an even more impeccable sense of self-awareness, which only makes it more enthralling, since we are invited on this journey into this obstacle-laden marriage, taken down a path that we happily traverse, since even though we can sense there isn’t going to be much resolution, it’s very clear that there will be several unique surprises waiting for us on the other side, and to do this with such an enchanting, simple romantic drama is a feat all on its own, and yet another reason why it’s so easy to praise Hansen-Løve as the cinematic voice of an entire generation.