Director Mia Hansen-Løve is revealing what it was really like filming the 2021 critically acclaimed feature “Bergman Island” with actors Tim Roth and Vicky Krieps.
Also weighing in, “Bergman Island” lead star Krieps cited a “culture clash” between frequent Quentin Tarantino collaborator Roth and Hansen-Løve in a new Vanity Fair profile.
Previously, Roth was rumored to make a crew member cry during production, according to a Filmmaker Magazine op-ed by Gabe Klinger, who had a small onscreen role in the movie.
Owen Wilson was originally attached to co-lead the film but dropped out ahead of production. Hansen-Løve met Roth only two or three times prior to him joining “Bergman Island” and the actor “didn’t know much about Bergman and Sweden.” Krieps plays Hansen-Løve’s insert, a writer/director named Chris, who is married to an older director named Tony, played by Roth, who is inspired by Hansen-Løve’s former romantic partner.
Per actress Krieps, Hansen-Løve “really struggled” with Roth on set. “Tim is, first of all, a man, and second, a man of a different time and someone who’s been working in Hollywood in very different kinds of movies,” Krieps said. “[There] was a culture clash, to say the least.”
IndieWire has reached out to Roth for comment.
Hansen-Løve, according to Vanity Fair, “felt intimidated by Roth” and the actor “wouldn’t initially take direction easily,” like refusing to swim for a scene when the water was too cold.
“I am critical. Some directors, whatever the actors do, they say, ‘It’s great, it’s amazing.’ If I feel I don’t have it yet, as long as it’s psychologically possible for the actors to accept, I will try again and reach it,” Hansen-Løve said of her directing process.
The “One Fine Morning” helmer noted that she has a different experience working with male actors than female stars.
“It’s not that I think they don’t respect my work — it has nothing to do with that — but I just think that there is a total organic bond or link that I’ve had with the female actresses in my films, in all the roles, and there is no exception,” Hansen-Løve said. “I do feel that some male actors, even if they’re not aware of it, have a little more difficulty accepting being filmed by women.”
Hansen-Løve previously told IndieWire that the intimate feature was about “the invisible process that is my way of working, the only way I know how to make films.”
“I wish I could just decide to make a film about that or this. I wish I could just decide who I am,” Hansen-Løve said. “The only strengths that I have as a director, I got it from my from pains, from the weaknesses of my life. Sometimes you use fictional characters to do things that you cannot do in real life, to emancipate when you cannot emancipate. It’s also an escape somehow, and it helps you live, cope. And also believe.”
