Joachim Trier's tragicomedy "Sentimental Value" /„Sentimental Value“/, which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, was released on November 20. A film about the distance between a father-director and his actress daughter contains therapeutic reflections on the imperfections of a family and the memory of generations, RBC writes.
Theatrical actress Nora Borg (Renate Rainsve) experiences a panic attack right before the start of a performance. In need of an urgent emotional change, Nora runs to kiss a married colleague (Anders Danielsen Lee), receives a slap of encouragement, comes to her senses and goes on stage. After her performance, Nora receives a standing ovation.
The triumph gives way to a memorial service for her mother, who dies after a long illness. Together with her younger sister, historian Agnes (Inga Ybsdotter Liljeas), Nora welcomes everyone to the family home who have come to express their condolences and honor the memory of the deceased. Her estranged father, Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård), also appears. He once traded his family for a career, and Norway for Sweden. And - how audacious! - he immediately offers Nora the lead role in a new film dedicated to her grandmother, who was once found hanged. A script has already been written specifically for Nora, but offended by her father, she refuses the offer.
The role in this deeply personal film for Gustav goes to Hollywood star Rachel Kemp (the stunning Elle Fanning). The American dyes her hair from blonde to brunette and trains her sad gaze to resemble Nora Borg. But something doesn't work...
„Sentimental Value“ fits seamlessly into Joachim Trier's dramatic filmography, in which stories of women's midlife crises stand side by side with family sagas. The Norwegian director has impressed the audience at the Cannes Film Festival three times with his sensitive films about the sentimental pains and joys of life. He always tells stories about simple human lives with a distinctive tone, imbued with a light, melancholic note. His psychological portraits of his characters are consistently captivating thanks to the fact that the actors don't act, but live in the frame.
Joachim Trier's previous film, "The Worst Man in the World" (2021), gracefully balances between anti-romantic comedy and existential drama about a woman going through a turbulent period and struggling to understand her own desires and goals. "Sentimental Value", like his film "Noisy Bombs" (2015), prefers the fragility of a dysfunctional family to the chaos of 30-year-old love. However, the parental figure (this time the father, not the mother) also prioritizes professional self-realization over the well-being of loved ones. Driven by selfishness, a talented man devotes himself entirely to his calling, leaving his loved ones to live with the consequences of this choice.
In “Sentimental Value“, the 51-year-old Trier wonders whether it is worth sacrificing family for art. He himself has two daughters, so creating such a story seems completely natural.
The respected director Gustav Borg has made brilliant films (including a war drama starring his youngest daughter), but has shown no interest in the lives of his children. The lack of a father figure had a greater impact on the older of the two sisters, Nora, who acts as a mother figure to little Agnes in difficult times. Panic attacks before going on stage, a chronic sense of rejection, and a fear of loneliness seem like obvious echoes of the trauma of being abandoned as a daughter.
Nora rightly avoids her elderly father when he tries to get close. Renate Rainsve, Trier's favorite, embodies her character's inner vulnerability with just a glance. The younger sister, married to Agnes, is more forgiving and believes that Nora should give the rebellious old man a chance.
The image of Gustav's father is both comic and tragic. The great Stellan Skarsgård makes the veteran director, a rival of Ingmar Bergman, a complex person, with his own flaws and fragile excuses. Gustav embodies the greatness of cinema that has overshadowed his family. Trier does not make Nora and Agnes' father a saintly genius: he is a regular heavy drinker, flirts with young women, and refuses to take responsibility for his egocentricity.
Skarsgård is reminiscent of the charismatic bon vivant Felix from Sofia Coppola's film “The Last Straw“, played by Bill Murray. Coppola, of course, knows firsthand the burden of being the daughter of a great father. In “Sentimental Value“ the parent-child conflict is also built on attempts to find a common language, to see each other as imperfect but still close people. Although her father is absent from Nora's life for a long time, he somehow knows how bad she is at a certain point and manages to reflect this in his film's script.
Joachim Trier draws parallels between the traumas of women from different generations of the same family. For the director, accepting the inherited despair is the key to liberation from inner pain.
A knot of destinies and reflections emerges: Agnes studies archival records about her grandmother, who was in the Resistance during the Nazi occupation, imprisoned for treason and tortured. The lines from Gustav's planned film about his mother, read by the naive American Rachel, are addressed to Nora. She is burdened by the same joyless thoughts as her late grandmother, and only her father is able to grasp this connection.
The film is multi-layered and meaningful, at times absurd (the scene in which Gustav gives his young grandson a DVD with “The Pianist“ and “Irreversibility“ is both scandalous and funny), but most often sad. In Trier, the conflict between fathers and sons goes hand in hand with an unconditional and all-encompassing sisterhood: Nora took care of Agnes as a child, and now their roles are reversed.
The theater in the film (“The Seagull“ and Chekhov's “Medea“ betrayed by a man) is closely intertwined with Scandinavian drama in the spirit of Bergman's films (“Autumn Sonata“) and Ibsen's plays. A lively, albeit dilapidated, house in Oslo, preserving the memories of several generations of one family, emerges as an independent character. During the years of occupation, the Borg house is a place of unrest; in the 1960s it becomes a place of endless parties, a place of parental strife in Nora and Agnes' childhood, and a refuge of grief after the death of their mother. Only the reunion of distant relatives can breathe life into the family nest.
Joachim Trier does not discover America with his family drama. The director speaks about sentimental problems such as overcoming generational wounds and the need to reconcile with parents for peace of mind. Exploring the painful connection between the past and the present, Trier does not indulge in a pompous monologue about forgiving the sins of the fathers. On the contrary, he believes in family therapy, the power of comprehensive reflection and the possibility of living together despite bitter experiences. And this sincere faith, perhaps, is the main value of "Sentimental Value".