‘Sentimental Value’ explores the nexus of love, art
As a huge fan of 2021’s “The Worst Person in the World,” it was with great anticipation that I awaited Joachim Trier’s follow-up, “Sentimental Value,” a recent Cannes darling that does nothing less than reinvent the family drama. The tale of a movie director, not unlike Trier, awkwardly attempting to reconnect with his estranged daughters, is as much a seriocomic meditation on mortality as it is a rousing celebration of an artist using his art to heal festering wounds and bridge vast divides.
It thrives on a career-best performance by Stellan Skarsgård, who draws from his own brush with death (a stroke in 2022), to portray Gustav Borg, a septuagenarian filmmaker of some renown who has returned to his Norwegian homeland to attend the funeral of the mother of his two adult children: Nora Borg (Renate Reinsve), an accomplished and acclaimed stage actress/TV star; and Agnes Borg Petersen (Inga Ibsdotter Lillieaas), a one-time child actor who now embraces domesticity as the wife of Even (Andreas Stoltenberg Granerud) and the mother of Erik (Øyvind Hesjedal Loven), an adorable tow-headed 9-year-old.
The funeral repast unfolds at the film’s epicenter, a spacious, brown-hued Dragestil with cherry-red trim in upper-middle-class Oslo. It’s been in the Borg family for generations, as much a member of the clan as any human. As such, it has witnessed generations of joy and suffering, as ingeniously illustrated in an opening series of recollections. The most resonant of those events being the suicide of Gustav’s mother, a traumatized survivor of a World War II prison camp. She also happened to be the subject of one of the director’s most acclaimed films, starring Agnes as his mother’s younger self.
It’s all very meta, to the point of mild confusion. What’s clear is the sorry state of Gustav’s health. He knows his days are numbered, especially in the wake of his ex’s death and the devastation of realizing his friend and trusted cinematographer, Peter (Lars Väringer), is significantly disabled. As if Gustav needed additional inspiration to write his swansong – his first narrative film in 15 years – he crafts an Ibsenesque screenplay in which a distraught, suicidal mother is literally at the end of her rope. It’s no mystery that “Mom” is a composite of Gustav’s mother and his eldest daughter.
He wants Nora to fill the role, but his pitch is met with disdain and resentment. She won’t even read the thing. Dejected, but undeterred, he offers the part to an American ingenue in Elle Fanning’s Rachel Kemp, whom he meets in France during a retrospective of his works. She gushes, confessing to him during a late-night gathering on a Riviera beach, that she longs to make films like the one they just saw about his sainted mother.
That’s the basic plot, but what Trier does with it is spellbinding in revealing truths about our capacity to foster grudges, cling to resentment, and resist forgiveness. These are feelings Nora embraces, despite the obvious toll they are taking on her personally and professionally. Who better to play her than Reinsve, Trier’s muse and unforgettable star of “The Worst Person in the World,” in which she also depicted an unbending martyr.
Reinsve nails the dramatic parts as effortlessly as she does the numerous comedic turns in which she clearly has fun acting out Nora’s debilitating bouts of stage fright. And it’s that discernible sense of humor that tempers the more sobering scenes in which Nora is driven by bitterness to rebuff all attempts by Gustav to call a truce. Most remarkable is Reinsve’s ability to express her displeasure through deafening silences and lacerating stares. Her Nora is both fearless and vulnerable, unwilling to let anyone outside of Agnes get close, including Jacob (Anders Danielsen Lie), the married stagehand who doubles as her part-time lover. The coupling marks a reunion of sorts for Lie, who played Reinsve’s cancer-stricken boyfriend in “Worst Person,” the film that established Reinsve as a bona fide star.
Lillieaas complements her perfectly as the warmer of the two siblings. Her Agnes harbors her own arsenal of animus, but as a mother, she recognizes the benefit of declaring bygones in order to preserve familial harmony. It’s a lovely turn, equal parts valor and compassion, qualities no doubt Agnes inherited from her late mother, a psychoanalyst. Nora, though, is just like her dad, a charismatic, laissez-faire sort incapable of masking her narcissism.
It’s her agrieved nature that Fanning’s Rachel is struggling to grasp while reading for Gustav, who encourages her to improvise her character’s backstory instead of endeavoring to emulate Nora. As hard as she tries, Rachel struggles to flesh out a character she knows was written for Nora. And Fanning is excellent at projecting Rachel’s self-doubt and her eagerness to please a director as highly esteemed as Gustav. In fact, Rachel is so devoted to the project that she agrees to dye her blonde locks brown and style them in the manner of Nora. Their resemblance is eerie, as Gustav seems to be seeking to shape Rachel into a surrogate for Nora.
What’s more perplexing is how Gustav lavishes Rachel with comfort and support, even giving her a hug when appropriate; all gestures of affection he could never demonstrate toward his own daughters. It’s the same in his interactions with his grandson Erik, whom he joyfully dotes on. Observing these acts of tenderness only drives Nora further to the brink. Why is this? And why is Gustav more at ease with a stranger or an impressionable child than with his own daughters?
These are the questions fueling the screenplay Trier co-wrote with his “Worst Person” partner Eskil Vogt. With two daughters of his own, Trier is no doubt speaking from experience when he explores the guilt of having, at some point, prioritized filmmaking over family. If so, what then is the proper balance between fatherhood and one’s creative passion? There is no answer, of course, but he seems to suggest that merely acknowledging such neglect is a pathway to healing.
Whatever the ultimate aim, the end product is breathtakingly gorgeous, shot with an astute attention to detail by Kasper Tuxen, capitalizing on the movie’s picturesque French and Norwegian locations. It noticeably lacks the magic and wonder of “Worst Person,” and some may quibble over Trier cutting corners in pursuit of a happy ending. But his intent is unimpeachable, as he continues his quest to deconstruct the nuts and bolts of relationships, be they romantic or domestic.
For him, love is a many-splintered thing, often conveyed by means of messy, contradictory behaviors. And while “Sentimental Value” doesn’t quite reach the heights of “Worst Person,” it remains a marvelous achievement, and one that reinforces the philosophy that love is art and art is love. And without the two, we are nothing.
Movie review
Sentimental Value
Rated: R for some language, brief nudity and a sexual reference
Cast: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Elle Fanning, Inga Ibsdotter Lillieaas and Øyvind Hesjedal Loven
Director: Joachim Trier
Writers: Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt
Runtime: 133 minutes
Where: In theaters (limit) before expanding in coming weeks
Grade: A-
