Sentimental Value: Joachim Trier Unearths Buried Emotions in a Drama-Oriented Clan
By Karen Gordon
Rating: A
Sentimental Value, one of the year’s best films, is an absorbing, beautifully drawn family drama that walks lightly, but goes deep.
Directed by Joachim Trier, from a script he co-wrote with his writing partner Eskil Vogt, Sentimental Value is Norway’s submission to the Best International Feature category at the Oscars. Like their previous film The Worst Person In The World, it might end up in the Best Picture category as well.
The film - which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, and was the first runner-up in the International People’s Choice Award at The Toronto International Film Festival - centres around the relationship between a successful film director and his two daughters as they navigate their strained relationship after the death of their mother, his ex-wife.
Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård) seeks a rapprochement with daughter Nora (Renate Reinsve)
Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, are sisters Nora and Agnes. Nora is an esteemed and talented stage and TV actress. An early and prolonged sequence in the film is about Nora fighting extreme stage fright at the opening night of a stage production in which she is the star.
Read our interview with the cast of Sentimental Value
When she’s finally able to stride onto the stage, we see just a few seconds of it, enough to know that she is a ferocious talent. But how much does that talent sustain her?
Agnes was also set up early in life to be an actor. As a child she starred in one of her father's landmark films, in a role that people still talk about. But she walked away from the family business and all of its uncertainties, egos and complications. She’s now in a stable marriage and mom to a seven-year-old.
Their mother has just died, leaving them to sort out her belongings, with all its sentimental value, to get the house ready for sale. The ownership of the house is in the hands of their father Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård), from whom they’ve been semi-estranged.
We can see why within a few seconds of his appearance in the film. Gustav is self-absorbed, emotionally unattuned and unfiltered, sometimes saying things to his daughters, especially to Nora, that he seems not to recognize as dismissive or hurtful.
In other words, he’s not consciously trying to be terrible, but seems to not be able to stop himself from being a jerk around her.
Gustav wants to reconcile with his daughters, and not just for greater ease of conversation. Although it’s not explicitly stated, there’s a sense he wants to find his way back, to build an emotional bridge with them. At the same time, he’s emotionally walled up.
And so, consciously or not, he’s working it out in the way he understands: through his art. He’s written a film based on his own childhood and has written the role of his mother for Nora. Nora, in one of the quietest and yet most potent scenes in the film, refuses.
So, he moves on. At a film festival running a retrospective of his work, Gustav connects with American actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) and offers her the part. Kemp comes to Oslo and they begin rehearsals in the family’s house. Kemp is a vulnerable serious talent and through their work we see what Gustav could be for his daughters.
The house is another character in Sentimental Value. The film begins with its history and relationship to the family. This is where the house that Gustav grew up in, where his mother committed suicide, where he lived with his wife after they got married, where his ex wife had her therapy practice, and where his daughters grew up. The house itself, is a big sprawling light filled place, a container of memories, happy, sad, playful, unresolved.
If I’ve made Sentimental Value sound angst ridden and bleak, then I’ve done the film a disservice. It is neither of those things. Trier has a knack for making movies about interesting characters who are at turning points in their lives, at a place where their emotional baggage has started to affect or complicate their choices in a way that feels natural and is engrossing. Just as the house is filled with sunlight, the issues that the characters are dealing with are full of potential.
As in his previous film, the Oscar nominated The Worst Person In The World (which also starred Reinsve), Sentimental Value is, at times, melancholy, but it’s not melodramatic, or tragic. Trier doesn’t manipulate us for dramatic value. There’s a real craft in the way he tells stories.
He is amply helped out here by a fantastic, note-perfect cast, who bring all kinds of subtleties into their performances. There are things that hang in the air between the characters that give us as much insight as the dialogue.
This especially applies to the relationship between Nora and Gustav, who the film really centres on. Father and daughter seem different and yet emotionally so similar that bridging the gap between them is difficult. What hangs between them is both a desire to flee from each other, and a craving for the deep love that neither can express at this point.
Trier explores this by standing back and letting his actors work. He’s not looking to give us easy answers. As in real life, emotional patterns do not resolve easily or quickly. And his inherent understanding of that keeps the film grounded.
There’s an emotional honesty and an integrity to the film
It's complex. It’s human. It is what Trier does so beautifully. Sentimental Value is a sophisticated, wonderful film, and more proof that Trier is one of the best young filmmakers in the world.
CLICK HERE to read Bonnie Laufer’s interviews with Stellan Skarsgård, Elle Fanning, Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas.
Sentimental Value. Directed by Joachim Trier, written by Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt. Starring Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning. In theatres November 14.