BERGMAN ISLAND

 Vicky Krieps     Tim Roth     Mia Wasikowska     Grace Delrue     Anders Anderson Lie

            We meet Tony (Roth) and Chris (Krieps) as they are getting on a ferry to Fårö Island, home for 40 years of the renowned writer/director of Swedish films, Ingmar Bergman.  And you can see why he lived there so long; it is lush and evocative of special island places.  But place is not the issue or main point in this production.  Both Tony and Chris are Bergman fans.  He is older, a filmmaker considered as one of the experts on Bergman, and he has been invited to screen his latest production, hence his excitement about visiting the island.  Chris is younger and earlier in her career as a screenwriter.  She has had some success but is currently suffering from writer’s block.  Right away one senses the two are in different places in their minds.  And the story is primarily about their relationship.

            Krieps is the lead actor in this production written and directed by Mia Hansen-Løve (All is Forgiven, The Father of My Children), who was acclaimed for her last film (Things to Come).  Having read that she was a close collaborator and partner of the filmmaker Olivier Assayas and her penchant for semi-autobiographical films, I got the impression she identified with Chris, the character in this film.  She is quoted as saying, “the film really came together when I thought of the island of Fårö as a possible setting for the story”, and this line is uttered by the character Chris during the film when she is summarizing her thoughts to Tony about the script she is writing.

            In Bergman Island, Chris and Tony seem like a mismatched couple.  He is well established in his career, confident and decisive, but withholding in talking about his work with Chris.  (Although he did say he was writing about “how invisible things circulate within a couple”, which could easily be referring to the two of them, but of course he doesn’t elaborate.)  On the other hand, she is fearful (even of flying), lacks confidence in her abilities, and is frequently asking Tony for help.  When she goes into detail about her ideas for a plot, he interrupts her twice to answer his phone.  That is, there is a fundamental mismatch between them.  Although he denies his lack of interest, it seems obvious from his behavior that he gets bored.  And that’s not surprising, given the plot.

            Chris introduces her script plan to Tony by saying, “It’s a series of failure, betrayals, dramas…of impossible mourning and suffering overshadowed by a few memories” and I thought, “Who would want to see that?”  And indeed, one gets the impression her story  (told in film-within-a-film) is about a frustrated love interest of the woman Amy (wonderfully captured by Wasikowska) versus the much more thoughtful, planful first-love Joseph (Lie) who has enough insight to have a conscience.   He points out her ambivalences in relationships by saying, “You want to have two children by two different men.”  (And this is a reference to Chris’ earlier negative reaction when she was told that Ingmar Bergman had 9 children with five wives.)  Joseph’s condescension mirrors Chris’ earlier “harumph!”

            As a fan of Bergman films, I was all set to relish Bergman Island; and indeed there are many references to him and to his films (Through a Glass Darkly, Cries and Whispers, Persona), but none seem to relate to Mia Hansen-Løve’s plot.  Rather, it seems to be something of an autobiographical account of her relationship with Olivier Assayas, her partner for a number of years, and more generally with questions about a (female) writer claiming her own voice, particularly alongside a man of with a proven reputation.  There are mostly plusses for this film, but it could have been more explicit and decisive in its plot.

 

 

Not an ode to Ingmar Bergman, but a contrast between his career and that of a female screenwriter of today.

 

Grade:  B-                                         By Donna R. Copeland

PHANTOM THREAD

Daniel Day Lewis     Vicky Krieps     Lesley Manville

     Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will be Blood, The Master) likes to explore the psychology of people and how types react to one another in relationships.  In the case of the two main characters in Phantom Thread, the power and dependency needs of each are woven into the fabric of their relationship. 

     It begins when couture dress designer Reynolds Woodcock (Lewis) catches sight of a waitress named Alma (Krieps), something not predictable from what we have come to know about him, and which is another instance of Anderson gleefully heightening the intrigue.  Reynolds is precise in every way, pretentious, and strongly opinionated about his surroundings.  His clients idolize him.  His attraction to Alma is unexpected, since she is rather clumsy, warm, and from a lower class of society.  But she is maximally compliant—at least in the beginning—and one can see he has fantasies of molding her into his ideal woman.  What he doesn’t see at first is a woman who has a strong need to control, particularly when she is pushed.  What she doesn’t see at first is his infantile reaction to rejection that temporarily incapacitates him.  What we don’t see initially are the forms their relationship will take across time and the eventual outcome.

     Complicating the picture is Reynolds’ sister Cyril (Manville).  The two established The House of Woodcock, a couture business years before, and both live in the house where designs are created by Reynolds and sewn up with the help of female employees.  Their mother taught Reynolds his art, and he keeps her within his heart and mind, still missing her long after her passing.

     Phantom Thread is beautifully filmed by writer/director Anderson as cinematographer (although he says it was a team effort) with an award-winning crew (Mark Tildesley, production design; Veronique Melery, set design; and Mark Bridges, costume design), set in London’s couture world in the 1950’s.  The designs Reynolds creates may not be to everyone’s taste, but watching him and his staff create them gives a sense of the passion in the art of design.  Jonny Greenwood’s score is inventive in its expression of the drama ongoing in every scene.

     This work is purportedly Daniel Day Lewis’ swan song, and he puts his whole being into it, swaggering when Reynolds is on top of his game, looking like he is going to die any moment in some scenes, curling up like a wounded baby in others, and in still others courting his lady in the most unusual—but usually appealing—ways.  Lesley Manville as his sister can be cold as ice, never shows much emotion at all except disapproval, but clearly comes across as a mother-substitute to her brother.  Vicky Krieps manages to pull off a servile persona when she needs to, to get what she wants, then shows a cunning, precise calculation that was never apparent in her waitress job.  One of the funniest—and most descriptive and strangely predictive lines in the film is, “What a model of politeness you two are”, observed by Reynolds to his sister after an interaction between the two women.  We should be seeing much more of Krieps after her success in this film.

     Phantom Thread is more likely to appeal to viewers who relish its informed psychology of human relationships and families.  Its slower pace in the beginning is meant to establish the context and inform about the main characters, and it has depth in this sense and in the points Anderson wants to get across; but it is also very funny, sometimes with dark humor and sometimes just goofy.  Others may enjoy it simply as a British period drama depicting haute couture in London in the fifties.

If you are a Daniel Day Lewis fan, take heed; this is likely to be his last.  And Paul Thomas Anderson gives us a fine production in which to highlight talents of the two collaborators.

Grade:  A                                                By Donna R. Copeland