It’s looking like Mia Wasikowska’s suggestive acting paired with Mia Hansen-Løve’s subtle filmmaking will be a perfect match.
In an exclusive from Screen Daily, it has been revealed director of 2016’s Things to Come, Mia Hansen-Løve’s next film is set to feature an array of your favorite stars. From Greta Gerwig (who can also be seen in Hansen-Løve’s 2014 Eden) to The Big Lebowski’s John Turturro, the filmmaker’s next feature already sounds promising. Also joining Gerwig and Hansen-Løve newcomer Turturro is Mia Wasikowska, and it’s this collaboration between the actress and director that proves most exciting.
Inspired by a trip to the Island of Faro, the place of Ingmar Bergman’s old home, Hansen-Løve’s English-language debut is clearly inspired by the late Swedish director. Called Bergman’s Island, the film centers on the relationship between a filmmaking couple. As per Screen Daily, the couple ‘retreat to the island for the summer to each write screenplays for their upcoming films in an act of pilgrimage to the place that inspired Bergman.’ Reality and fantasy begin to blur as each writer goes deeper into their story, with the backdrop of the island’s untamed landscape adding some pathetic fallacy.
Speaking to The Film Stage when promoting last year’s Things to Come, Hansen-Løve observed: “there are a lot of films where you feel like there is no subconscious in them because they are so self-conscious in a way that it blocks the access to the unconscious.” The filmmaker continued by observing her aspirations when making a film: she tries “to write films and make them in a way that gives the space and the possibility for the unconscious to find its way through.” While this description of the unconscious type of filmmaking speaks to Bergman’s work, it is also reminiscent of Wasikowska’s type of acting.
Wasikowska’s style of acting is more concerned with the motivations that come from within rather than external emotional factors. Her facial expressions and tone of delivery are expressed internally rather than as a reaction to the actor standing in front of her. Wasikowska doesn’t so much
Wasikowska doesn’t so much become her characters as she is them, each facet of the person she plays feeling as though they have always existed. It’s clear, then, why Wasikowska will be a perfect fit for Hansen-Løve’s worlds. Paired with the director’s suggestive and subtle filmmaking that leaves room for the viewer’s unconscious, the pairing of Wasikowska and Hansen-Løve is looking like a perfect match.
Charles Gillibert, who previously produced Things to Come and Eden, will continue his role on Bergman’s Island. Developed with Sweden’s Filmregion Stockholm-Mälardalen through Gotlands Filmfond, shooting for the film will begin in summer 2018.