A creative couple explores artistry and love in the environs of an influential filmmaker in Mia Hansen-Løve’s breezy Bergman Island.

Leaving behind their young child, the pair journeys to a writer’s retreat on the Baltic island of Fårö where the Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman shot many of his films, beginning with Through a Glass Darkly in the early 1960s, and where he lived through the rest of his life.

The two filmmakers—seasoned, older Tony (Tim Roth) and self-doubting, younger Chris (Vicky Krieps)—may have been inspired by real life, as Hansen-Løve got her start acting in films by Olivier Assayas (Late August, Early September; Sentimental Destinies), and later they became romantic partners and had a child.

Despite the travelogue quality of this Bergman expedition, the film is barely shot to enhance the island’s natural beauty, and the mise-en-scène is pedestrian in general. (Fårö really does have a “theme park” for the Swedish director, and fans flock by the boatload to experience his life and work.)

The title will draw Bergman fans, but Chris stands in for audiences who don’t bow down to him. “I hope he had more fun in his life than in his movies,” she says, pointing out the harshness in his oeuvre. Tony counters that the director was dark and wanted to explore that side of himself. Although the film is a brief education in the departed director and his work, it’s really about the creative process, and not particularly a tribute to Bergman.

In their temporary abode, the couple rejects the big bedroom where Scenes from a Marriage took place, as the film was rumored to have influenced the rising divorce rates in Sweden at the time. Later, two Nordic-style desks contrast the methods of each of the pair. His is organized with in-depth scripts and notebooks while hers is modest as she struggles with an outline and fiddles with her fountain pens.

She says the environment is too beautiful, too calm, how can she not feel like a loser here? He responds, “No one is expecting Persona,” referring to another film shot on the island. She wants to discuss her thoughts and ideas in detail; he prefers to stay with vague concepts for his new film so as not to “jinx” it.

On the other hand, Chris recounts the script she is working on, about a young woman who reconnects with an old love. Is this a stealthy way for her to confess an affair to Tony? Is she trying to make him jealous or get a rise out of him? He’s not interested enough to decline a cell phone call and is spare with his input.

Her story becomes a film within the film, called “The White Dress,” in which Mia Wasikowska plays a movie director who rekindles an affair with an ex, played by Anders Danielsen Lie, at the wedding of a friend on…the isle of Fårö. It should come as no surprise that the real life of innovators, be it Chris or Hansen-Løve, would influence their work. Here though, truth and fiction increasingly intersect, and audiences will enjoy puzzling out how actual events wind up on screen. Without a linear narrative, some mysteries are left to ponder, and the pleasure is in the contemplation. Naturalistic acting all around—particularly from Krieps and Wasikowska—heighten the not-quite-documentary episodes that capture the couple’s mixed sensibilities.

Bergman Island is a whimsical adventure, a beguiling fantasy, and so evocative one can imagine other environments to whet the creative juices: a Fellini amusement park, perhaps?

Bergman Island will be released in the U.S. on October 15.