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Interview: Vicky Krieps on Bergman Island and Living in the Shadow of Ingmar Bergman

Vicky Krieps discusses what Bergman’s legacy means to her now, and what Phantom Thread means to her several years later.

Interview: Vicky Krieps on Bergman Island and Living in the Shadow of Ingmar Bergman
Photo: IFC Films

Vicky Krieps achieved the sort of overnight success that most actors can only dream of with her role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 film Phantom Thread. At the time, the actress avoided the limelight, continuing to opt for smaller roles in lower-profile European projects. But Krieps switches gears in 2021, with a whopping six projects premiering within the year. Her curiosity and versatility as a performer are on full display in collaborations with directors ranging from Mathieu Amalric to M. Night Shyamalan.

By Krieps’s own telling, it’s one project among the half-dozen that enabled the rest: Mia Hansen-Løve’s Bergman Island. The film’s multiyear production, a result of casting complications for her on-screen partner, adds a revelatory tension to the character of Chris, a filmmaker trying to assert and establish her own voice while on a retreat to the island of Fårö, where Ingmar Bergman lived for many years. As if Bergman’s long shadow wasn’t enough, she must also contend with standing alongside the seemingly effortless output generated by her more successful husband (Tim Roth) as he basks in the adulation of fans on the island.

Bergman Island thrillingly captures all sorts of hazy boundaries between reality and fiction. It’s in the autobiographical echoes of the story to Hansen-Løve’s own relationship with Olivier Assayas, and in the journey of Chris finding her personal confidence through narrating the film’s story within a story. And situated between these is Krieps’s creation of a character through which she could set her own bearings as a person and performer moving forward.

I spoke with Krieps after Bergman Island played at the New York Film Festival. Our chat covered how the production helped unlock her character, what Bergman’s legacy means to her now, and what the experience of making Phantom Thread means to her several years later.

Did you discuss the film’s auto-fictional elements with those who lived the experiences you’re dramatizing? Or was it easier just to create the character from scratch?

I didn’t think about that it was partly autobiographical. It’s not completely. The way we shot the film in two parts, we had to shoot it first without Tim, without even knowing who would play my husband, so I think it wouldn’t have been helpful to think about anything too concrete. I couldn’t imagine who was the husband. What I then tried to do was connect more to something more like poetry. Almost like just being inspired by the island and maybe the ghost of Bergman. What this woman is living on the island, I feel I had a connection without knowing exactly what it’s about. It’s this melancholy, longing feeling that you have sometimes even when you’re in a relationship. You feel there’s something missing, or maybe there’s somewhere else I should go. Especially when you’re an artist and you’re trying to find your story, you feel lost in the process because it feels so painful to get there or accept who you are. She has all these questions, and so I found it more helpful to just not think about the story so much. [I was] a bit more open to my actual surroundings, which was stones and the blue sky.

Various versions of Bergman Island would have seen you starring opposite John Turturro or Owen Wilson as your husband. Your character is so defined in her sense of self, but did you discover different sides of Chris when thinking about the way she’d react differently to each of these men?

The good thing is that the way we shot it, in two parts, we would always have the one part without a husband that would have been the same. That really created the core of Chris, I think, and that’s what created the way I talk in the movie. I remember finding this way of, again, I say poetry. I don’t know if you realize this, but some of her sentences are almost hovering there. It’s not like she’s saying it or not saying it. She’s not confronting him, but she’s also not running away. It’s not a question, but it’s not an affirmation either. It’s hovering somewhere in between. And I think this was a result of creating the character in a moment where I didn’t have my dialogue partner. It couldn’t be a monologue because that wouldn’t be the movie, so I had to create a dialogue with someone missing. This created the core of the character, which would have stayed the same with all of the three people. I do think it would have been very different in each case, but I really can’t tell you how! I would have had to see it.

Do you think that Bergman Island’s yearlong pause in production helped to bring you even more in touch with the character?

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Yes. It’s like when you see a weakness, and you turn it into your strength. Here, it was the same. I could have said, “This is difficult!” And it was difficult. I could have also said, “I’m not going to make it, I don’t know how!” But I took it more like a challenge instead of an obstacle, and it helped me then to embrace this moment of being lost. I was lost, too, as an actress not knowing who’s going to be my husband. [Mia Hansen-Løve] asked me to join the project three weeks before, so I didn’t really have time to prepare. I have two little children who I was supposed to spend my summer with, and then I decided to take them to that island. Instead of seeing it as something made me weaker, I tried to just embrace the chaos. Which I think, then, became the movie in a way. She’s also accepting being lost and that she doesn’t have a plan like her husband. She doesn’t have a way of doing like he has. She doesn’t have a name for her movies like he has. At some point, I think she lets go and accepts that she needs to find a different way of finding her story. And then she starts to dream. Her story gets born out of this dreaming more than out of controlling and knowing, which is kind of what I did.

Interview: Vicky Krieps on Bergman Island and Living in the Shadow of Ingmar Bergman
An image from Mia Hansen-Løve’s Bergman Island. © IFC Films

How did Ingmar Bergman, either in the legacy of his work or his lingering presence on the island, affect you and the character?

I would say that Bergman was the same kind of obstacle! [laughs] There were many obstacles in the making of this movie, and he was one of them because [you] really [have to try] to not think of him all the time when you’re on that island. He’s everywhere, and his movies are everywhere because the landscape is so much of his movies. The energy that the landscape emanates is also his movies. So, you think of him a lot, and then you try to not think of him. He becomes this shadow. It felt like he was a ghost following me all over that island.

Also, knowing that Mia worships him a lot, I knew him more like this old master. I remember watching his movies and I couldn’t relate to them immediately because I think I was too young. I think that the women in his movies have a very special place. The way he talks about and portrays women was really new in his time and very interesting. He gave women what felt like a real place. And as a young woman, I think I was too young to understand the pain in his movies and the pain of their characters. I was too young to accept or be open to it. Which changed later when I [revisited] his movies. Now, I have a very different approach. So, in shooting the movie, he really was always present, but I tried to find my own way.

Which of his movies opened up for you since making Bergman Island?

Oh, Persona, for sure. It’s exactly that kind of movie when I saw it younger, it just felt weird. I did find it interesting, and the acting was so good. But I remember feeling so awkward because it came close to me in a place I didn’t like. It was discomforting in a way. Now, when I watch it, it’s more a sort of relief to see people go through things that I might have inside of myself but I’m not living every day. There’s a certain deepness in his characters, especially female characters, that I now can give into like I couldn’t before.

How did the logistics of the voiceover for the film within Bergman Island work? Were you doing that independently of Mia Wasikowska’s performance, or did you record it with direct knowledge of the images your voice would appear over?

We did both. One we did right at the start, at the end of the first part of the shoot. That was without knowing or having seen any of it. That became something more direct, like her really directly explaining the story. And then we redid it later, with me watching the images. It then became more like a narrative, like someone telling a fairy tale. This was better for the film. In the beginning, it was more like direct speech talking to Tony. What’s interesting is that in both cases, whenever I spoke this [narration], I felt very sad. I tried not to think of it, and I remember trying to go against it. But all the way through the making of the movie, there was still a sadness inside of me. It’s the feeling you have sometimes when you don’t know who you are and if the place you’re in is yours. Is it maybe somewhere else? Did you miss it? Is it going to come one day? I think this is really the place I was in when I was doing the movie.

It strikes me that you as a person went on the same journey that your character does in Bergman Island. Things can start out sad, but the very act of telling your own story can empower your sense of selfhood. Did you feel that interplay?

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I think Chris and making the movie rubbed off on me a lot, in ways I cannot even say. And the character became the character also because of what I was going through. In the beginning, I read Chris as a mother and an artist, too, this balance that’s almost impossible. You try to find it, and so many movies now are telling this story. But then, doing it, I realize it’s more about letting go. You have your fears, you have your expectations, and you have this feeling of missing and longing which we all have. At some point, you just have to let go and say, “Well, this is me. This is my weakness.” Chris, I think, lets go and accepts that she will never write a story the way that [her husband] does. She will never sit down and have her structure or her way of how it works. But she will then just sit down, close her eyes, and tell the story.

And as Chris was letting go, as an actress I was letting go of the idea of the actress I have to be at this time in my life. I did Phantom Thread before, and that was very hard because it become a huge [success]. Now that I’ve done this movie, who’s Vicky the actress? [More importantly], who’s Vicky the person? Everyone was asking me, “What is the next movie you’re doing now? Who’s the actress you’re going to become?” It was really difficult because I suddenly had all these references in my head as people were comparing me to all these famous people. “You remind me of this person,” or “You should really be in this and this movie.” My head was full of this, and my self was nowhere. And I had to let go of this stress and say, “Well, I just do the next thing that feels natural, which is just do another French arthouse movie,” which is maybe what I would have done before Phantom Thread. That was very important for me.

I know you just said that Phantom Thread’s success made you feel self-conscious in a way that wasn’t necessarily productive, but has making Bergman Island made you open to revisiting that? Or will it always just be this object that you hold at arm’s length?

Making a good movie is like a love story. And making Phantom Thread was a very strong, deep experience. I think everyone who does movies with PTA would say that. Coming out of that shoot was like coming out of a very intense, deep relationship. You need time to let it go, and you need time to re-center yourself and figure things out. I think now that time has passed, I revisit this differently like you revisit a love story. I can laugh about certain things, but ever since we stopped shooting, I missed it. And this is something that I think will never go away.

Marshall Shaffer

Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based film journalist. His interviews, reviews, and other commentary on film also appear regularly in Slashfilm, Decider, and Little White Lies.

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