52 Films by Women Vol 6. 44. BERGMAN ISLAND (Director: Mia Hansen-Løve)
I confess I arrived late to an appreciation of French director Mia Hansen-L ø ve. Up until Bergman Island , her first predominantly English language film, I had not attuned myself to her low-key style of storytelling evident in such films as All is Forgiven , Eden and Things to Come . However, before watching Bergman Island , I hadn’t seen a film for ten days. It took the cleansing of my cinematic palate to surrender myself to a film that even by the standards of ‘arthouse’ cinema is slow and low stakes – at least to begin with. I knew I was going to have a good time when a satellite navigation system announced to its passengers, the filmmaking couple of Tony (Tim Roth) and Chris (Vicky Krieps), ‘you will reach your destination in one hour and forty-eight minutes’, which, broadly speaking is the running time of the film. The title sequence of Bergman Island consists of words typed on a white screen in a font similar to ‘Engravers MT’, complete with spelling corrections, wi...