Joachim Trier (The Worst Person in the World) understands something deep and complex about the human spirit. Sentimental Value proves it afresh, but with all the fangs and vanity of show business attached.
The story mines the psyches of two sisters, Nora (Renate Reinsve, wound like a clock) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), when their mother passes and their estranged, egotistical father Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård) steps back into their lives. A once-famous filmmaker, Gustav now insists upon his rights to descend on their ancestral family home to make a new movie. Nora is a successful stage actor but a nervous wreck, carrying on an affair with her married co-star (Trier regular Anders Danielsen Lie), while Agnes, a mother to a young boy, seems better-adjusted but is deeply unsettled by childhood memories of being used in one of her father’s productions. Both were abandoned by Gustav when they were young, and have little patience with his demands on their time as adults.
It’s a slowly unfurling film, full of words and recriminations in the manner of Scandi master Ingmar Bergman, but with a good deal more dark humour. Gustav, for instance, typically tone deaf and self-absorbed, brings hilariously inappropriate DVDs to his grandson’s tenth birthday – including Gaspar Noé’s rape drama Irreversible. And since Gustav insists on casting Nora as her own grandmother in the film, and Nora resists, he turns to a Hollywood starlet (Elle Fanning) to play the part instead, igniting tensions and jealousy even further.
It’s better – and far cheaper – than group therapy
As the preparations for the film-within-the-film accelerate, Sentimental Value builds gradually to a nuanced, poignant portrait of family love and strife. The sisterhood of Agnes and Nora is as powerful as the bonds between father and daughters – probably more so – as they lean on one another to navigate their parents’ messy history. The pair have a naturalistic comfort with one another that any sister will recognise.
And the complexity of the Skarsgård character – obnoxious but affectionate in his way, charismatically wise and also a fool – is fascinating too, evoking conflicting feelings of pity, annoyance and sympathy, sometimes in a matter of moments. In this way, it is a film of performances – bitter, strong, funny, deeply human performances – that the story hinges on.
Better (and far cheaper) than group therapy, Sentimental Value is a thoughtful and moving exploration of the long tail of family dynamics. Through the prism of these people, Trier looks at how our past always lives with us – but that we can find a way to be in the present with it nonetheless.
In UK and Ireland cinemas Dec 26.