THE STORY – An intimate and moving exploration of family, memories, and the reconciliatory power of art.
THE CAST – Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Elle Fanning & Cory Michael Smith
THE TEAM – Joachim Trier (Director/Writer) & Eskil Vogt (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 135 Minutes
“Praying isn’t really talking to God. It’s really just you acknowledging your despair.”
In 2021, Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier, along with longtime co-writer Eskil Vogt, struck a chord with audiences worldwide through “The Worst Person In The World,” a deeply affecting romantic dramedy that earned two Academy Award nominations and catapulted Renate Reinsve (who won the Best Actress prize at Cannes for her performance) to international acclaim. Now, the trio reunites for “Sentimental Value,” a richer, more sprawling film that deepens and expands Trier’s cinematic voice. It’s hard to believe, but it’s officially a reality; they’ve managed to top their already brilliant work with another thoughtful piece of storytelling that is complex and painful on a personal level. Set once again in Oslo, “Sentimental Value” is a richly textured story about two sisters, an estranged father, and a family home steeped in heartwarming and heartbreaking memories touching on themes of love, family, home, and artistic expression as a means of healing and moving on.
Actress Nora Berg (Reinsve) is introduced to us as she’s suffering from an anxiety attack before going out on stage to deliver a performance. She claims she can’t breathe in her dress, impulsively kisses one of the stagehands (“The Worst Person In The World” actor Anders Danielsen Lie, also working intimately with Renate again), and asks him to slap her. Eventually, she finds her way out there in front of the audience and gets the job done, but it’s clear that something is wrong with Nora. Perhaps it’s the recent passing of her mother that has brought her acclaimed film director father, Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård), back into her and her sister Agnes’s (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaa) lives, or perhaps it’s something else from back when Nora and Agnes were children living in that same home with their deceased mother and distant father. Nora’s volatility becomes the anchor for a narrative that circles back through her family’s history and forward into uncertain emotional terrain. By contrast, her sister Agnes has opted for stability: a husband and child with a more grounded life. And yet, the two remain fully connected, if not fully aligned. Gustav, who hasn’t directed a film in fifteen years, has written a script that he believes to be the best he’s ever made, and he wants his daughter Nora to play the lead. Unable to work with her father due to her issues stemming from her childhood, Nora declines the offer, and Gustav ends up casting famous American actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) instead. Gustav wants to shoot the film in his family’s home, asks Rachel to dye her hair the same as Nora’s, and is even open to her performing the role with a Norwegian accent even though she’s not particularly good at it. Many believe at first that the movie is about Gustav’s mother, who killed herself in that same house many years ago by hanging herself, but that may not exactly be the case.
The nature of home and what constitutes it is at the heart of “Sentimental Value.” The film opens on an extended flashback montage of the ancestral home dating back to Gustav’s parents raising him in the striking red-and-black house in Oslo. A flashback montage told via voiceover narration shows us the history of the home, what the house looks like over the years, how it changes, and how some things remain the same. The house prefers to be filled with people rather than empty. When it was full, what did it hear and feel? Back in the present, after their mother’s wake, Agnes is showing Nora all of the items their mother kept in the home, deciding what to keep and what to throw away. Some items have sentimental value, which, as we all know, is the value of an object deriving from personal or emotional associations rather than material worth. The house may have worth on the housing market, but the real worth comes from the memories that have been tucked away inside, the ones the next generation knows about, as well as the ones they don’t. The same can be said about having a family; many believe having one automatically means you’ll find happiness. For most, that might be the case, as having the next generation set up for a better life with positive, moral values you passed down to them can give one a sense of achievement during their time on this earth. But maybe that isn’t the case for everyone. Gustav seems to shrug off his accomplishments when he’s adorned with praise from those around him. He can have all the wealth and respect that comes along with having a successful film career, but if he doesn’t have the family and loved ones to share that success with, then what is the point? “Sentimental Value” is all about getting at the core of abandonment and how family and love can be used as a means to combat it and keep people away from depression. For most, that pivotal moment occurs in their childhood, and depending on the actions of their parents, it can have repercussions that last a lifetime. Trier, telling what must be a personal story as a filmmaker, husband, and father himself, injects this story with an exquisiteness that can be felt in nearly every aspect, from how the camera moves, how the beautiful score is used to evoke sentiment, how the many smash cuts to black happen immediately after the most emotive beats, to the tear-jerking performance performances he gets out of his cast.
A brilliant character actor who has given us many excellent performances for decades, Stellan Skarsgård has his finest hour in Joachim Trier’s latest. The 73-year-old Swedish actor is remarkably nuanced as a revered filmmaker who is closer to the end than the beginning of his life and is seeking to reconcile with his daughters through the only method he knows: artistic expression. Whoever Skarsgård’s Gustav was in his younger years, which caused him to fight with Nora and Agnes’s mother and walk out on the family to live out his dreams, that is not the man we see today. Delicate with his grandson, Agnes’s son Erik, polite and soft-spoken, handling everyone’s emotions with care and understanding (as any good director would), Gustav’s intentions are pure. But is it too late? He seems to have been softened by age, but his past decisions continue to haunt those around him. Nora is suffering from depression, and although her sister Agnes may have been able to rise above their childhood together and have a family of her own with her husband and son, Nora is alone and struggles to be intimate due to the rage that has consumed her since she was a little girl. Reinsve, like Skarsgård, doesn’t lash out in big, grandiose scenes of fury but rather is wounded on the inside, doing her best to project to others that she is fine when, in reality, she’s anything but. Reinsve and Skarsgård deliver excellent, nuanced performances as a father and daughter with a complicated relationship trying to work through years of no communication. This is quite ironic when you consider just how outstanding the two actors can communicate with one another to create such layered, effective performances on camera that will break and heal your heart all over again.
In fact, the whole cast is phenomenal, with Elle Fanning turning in one of her best performances in years, particularly during a scene where she delivers a tearful monologue from Gustav’s script. Fanning taps into the paradox of celebrity: seen by millions, yet profoundly alone, further proving the film’s theme that depression can still find you no matter what perception you may be putting out into the world for others. But perhaps the film’s emotional center lies with Agnes and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas during her climactic, cathartic scene with Reinsve, where the two open their hearts to each other, generating even more tears from the audience (just when you think it isn’t possible for this movie to make you grab more tissues than it already has), sending the film out on a moving highpoint when there were already so many other preceding moments.
The film’s soundscape and editing complement the film’s writing and direction from Trier so well. From Terry Callier’s “Dancing Girl” to Labi Siffre’s “Cannock Chase,” the soundtrack underscores the bittersweet emotional terrain of regret, love, and loneliness. The same can be said of the film’s meticulous editing. Cutting through scenes in precise moments to keep the 135-minute runtime moving at a brisk pace while knowing when to hold onto a shot for the actors to deliver a range of feelings, the most stirring moments arrive on the many smash cuts to black, which further punctuate a scene or shot for maximum impact.
“Sentimental Value” is a film about the weight of home, the bonds of family, and the redemptive potential of art. It’s a story only Joachim Trier could tell after working on “The Worst Person In The World” and challenging himself, Vogt, and Reinsve to go even deeper than they did previously to tell something that was just as impactful, if not more rewarding. It’s a daunting task to accomplish, but they somehow manage to do so with a film that will be cherished for generations. Reinsve, Skarsgård, Fanning, and Lilleaas form one of the most impressive ensembles of the year, each given the space and time to create compelling and relatable characters that offer rare subtlety and honest truth in their work rather than broad theatrics. Through this sophisticated, sincerely felt film, the real “sentimental value” in our lives lies not in what we achieve or receive but in who we are to the people closest to us and how, even in our absence, we impart pieces of ourselves on them.
