Joachim Trier’s a filmmaker whose willingness to accept uneasy, ambiguous emotional truisms has resulted in projects that rise above cliche. Although Trier’s previous film The Worst Person in the World was a clever take on the perspective of a free-spirited young woman’s arrested development, his latest masterwork Sentimental Value is successful in addressing the pain that parents pass along to their children.
Sentimental Value is opened by a death, and has a better depiction of the awkward stages of family reconnection than most contemporary weepies. Although the loss of his ex-wife Sissel is devastating for the filmmaker Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård), the tragedy hasn’t brought him any closer to his adult daughters, Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas). Nora also took up a career in the arts, but she’s haunted by the absence of her father, who abandoned their family when she was a child. Gustav has figured there’s no way that Nora would forgive him for his personal transgressions, but he’s theorized that he might have a shot if his outreach is framed as a purely artistic one. Shortly after the funeral proceedings, Nora’s presented with a new screenplay by her father, whose intention is to cast her in the lead role.
Nora’s life is already hectic, and she doesn’t need her father’s resurgence to add more chaos to her fractured mental health; much like Reinsve’s character Julie in The Worst Person in the World, Nora has valued professional opportunities and personal freedoms over the possibility of a long-term relationship, marriage or children. Nora’s at the rare point in her life where she has power over her father, who’s unlikely to gain funding if he doesn’t have a recognizable name attached to what would be a comeback project. However, Nora’s refusal doesn’t dismay Gustav, who’s prompted to hire the illustrious American star Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) to star.
The meta-narratives of Sentimental Value exist both within and outside of the film’s story. Although Gustav’s new film was intended to bring him closer to Nora, it’s really an autobiographical story about his mother, who took her own life after her experiences in the Holocaust. Gustav wasn’t prepared to be a father because his own parents never saw him reach adulthood, and it’s Nora who’s maintained ownership of the same family home in which his mother died. The shadow cast by this memory has had an effect on Nora’s approach to her artistic work, who suffered a series of breakdowns after her intensive acting techniques brought her too close to the troubled characters she was asked to portray. Gustav doesn’t want Nora to suffer the same pain his mother endured, but he’s unable to earn his daughter’s empathy within a medium outside of film; if he opened up to her, it’s unlikely that she’d believe his intentions were pure.
The pressures put upon Reinsve mirror the situation Nora’s in. After The Worst Person in the World, it seemed as if Reinsve would serve as the muse and creative partner to Trier, similar to the historical dynamics between Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina, Michelangelo Antonioni and Monica Vitti, or John Hughes and Molly Ringwald. With a project as personal as Sentimental Value, Reinsve is essentially asked to be a tool used by Trier to work through his own feelings; although Trier previously explored a shattered family dynamic in the English-language drama Louder Than Bombs, it was clear that Reinsve’s charisma was a missing component.
The most understated, and potentially best performance in the film is from Lilleaas, whose portrayal of Nora’s sister Agnes is appropriately reserved. If Nora’s inability to bond with her father is the result of willful resistance on both of their parts, Agnes is an example of how far a little forgiveness can go, especially since she has been content to raise a family outside of the entertainment industry. Fanning is given a more obviously self-referential role as a popular American celebrity thrust into the middle of a European art film, even if her own credits are far more substantial than that of her character.
Skarsgård’s performance may have been drawn from a variety of austere filmmakers he’s worked with, as the Norwegian actor’s impressive resume has included collaborations with Lars Von Trier, Wolfgang Peterson, Ingmar Bergman, Milos Forman, and Denis Villeneuve. It’s to Sentimental Value’s credit that the fact that it’s about filmmaking isn’t used an excuse to insert endless cameos, reference, or homages to other cinematic classics, even if there’s an amusing jab at Netflix and a joke at the expense of Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher.