The focus of Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” may be small and limited — one Norwegian family struggling to connect and communicate — and yet its emotional scope is downright cosmic. This is a film about life in the arts, about fulfillment and forgiveness, about performance, about stories true and falsely remembered, about home, about trauma, about allowing oneself to be seen and about some really excellent sweaters.
And at its heart is Stellan Skarsgård, doing some of his finest work in years as an acclaimed film director, Gustav Borg, who always chose his work over his family. Gustav is a familiar type, the kind of charismatic narcissist that professions like film director seem to attract and, often, exaggerate. He’s the kind who’s able to forge deep and meaningful connections with actors he’s just met and will only know for a few months that will produce great and lasting art. Yet his own daughters, Nora ( Renate Reinsve ) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), may as well be strangers. Now with his career in danger of fading into retrospective territory, he’s trying to right those wrongs (and, you know, make a comeback) the only way he knows how: Making another movie. Some people never learn.
What better time to approach Nora about starring in it than right after her mother and his ex-wife’s death? It’s not so random: Nora is a rather celebrated actor in Oslo, though her preferred medium is the stage. She’s so good, in fact, that she continues to get lead roles despite being what one might describe as a difficult and unreliable member of the company. In an early scene, we watch her attempt numerous times to flee right as the curtain is about to go up. But Gustav doesn’t go see her plays. And she doesn’t care about his films, or him. He’s a drunk who was never there, she says. And so, without even reading the script that he excitedly says he wrote for her, she turns down the offer.
The wounds run deep in this family, tethered to a home that has spanned generations and all of the highs and lows of life through the decades, including Gustav’s mother’s imprisonment torture during World War II. It can sound tiresome and cliche to describe places and things as characters, but the extended metaphor here is lovely and real, a physical space that is metaphorically the only thing tying them together. Gustav even wants to use it as a set for his film, which gets a second life when he connects with an American movie star named Rachel Kemp ( Elle Fanning ) who is desperate to do something meaningful. Soon comes the Netflix money, and some fun “inside show business” moments as Rachel prepares to play a difficult-to-crack character inspired by Gustav’s mother, who many years ago died by suicide in their home. There are shades of “Persona” as Rachel dyes her hair to match Nora’s and tries to understand not just the character but Nora as well.
When Rachel decides to drop out of the project, Gustav slips into an unexpectedly tender and fatherly mode, perfectly understanding, and comforting. When he cradles her head in with a gentle hug, it’s a lovely moment that’s laced with a melancholic truth: This is not something that Gustav has ever, or will ever, be able to do with his own kids.
In this group of wonderful performances, Lilleaas may be the real breakout for American audiences. As Agnes, she’s the one who her father chose to star in one of his films as a child and then walked away from acting entirely. Out of the bunch she seems to be the most well-adjusted, with a husband and son and ordinary concerns about money and protecting her older, more fragile sister. But beneath the surface, she has lingering pain too: For a brief moment, she was the center of her father’s world, and then it was gone. When he asks her if he can use her young son in his new film, the reaction is visceral and charged.
As in life, things kind of work themselves out and also kind of don’t. Trier and his longtime cowriter Eskil Vogt have deftly crafted a deeply humane and relatable story that feels whole and satisfying and cinematic without resorting to trite and tidy resolutions and redemptions.
It’s a tall task to follow up a smash like “The Worst Person in the World,” but “Sentimental Value” rises to the occasion: Mature, sharp, bittersweet and maybe even a little hopeful.
“Sentimental Value,” a Neon release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “a sexual reference, some language, brief nudity.” Running time: 133 minutes. Four stars out of four.
