Over the last few years, one of my favorite emergent filmmakers has been Danish director Joachim Trier. I don’t remember exactly when, but I put on Oslo, August 31st, which was playing on Netflix at the time, just on a whim. I was spellbound by it. Here was one of the best presentations of the pitfalls of substance use disorder I had ever seen, and in subsequent years, its real-time presentation has become all the more resonant to me for reasons I won’t go into here. When, just a few years ago, his latest film, The Worst Person in the World, was showered in much-deserved awards attention, it felt like a bit of a coronation for Trier. He had finally arrived at the party, and now every film he makes is going to be considered under those prestigious terms. By all accounts, Sentimental Value, his latest, was the runner-up for the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year. And as far as clear Best Picture contenders go, it’s standing as one of the earliest and most weathered of the films vying for the prize at this point.
Sentimental Value is centered on a father and daughter duo. The daughter of the pair, Nora (Renate Reinsve), is a working actress struggling with her own emotional wellness, having an affair with a married man (Anders Danielsen Lie), and wrestling with what her father terms basically as a pit of anger. That’s not to say her frustrations aren’t justified, particularly in how they’re aimed at that same father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), a legendary director who is finally attempting to reconnect with the daughter he left behind by way of one last screenplay written specifically for her. This proposal does not go as well as he would have hoped, and the production (and their relationship) becomes more complicated by the casting of famous actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), who takes on the role written specifically for Nora, creating an uncomfortable situation for all involved.
There’s a lot to admire about this tender story of an absent parental figure who still was able to loom large in his children’s lives by way of reputation. From the outset of the film, Trier focuses specifically on the house in which both Nora and her sister (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) were raised, as well as its history reaching back beyond even Gustav’s childhood. There’s a bit of a Richard McGuire/Here type effect that occasionally sees the film flashing into events that occurred in specific rooms, such as the death of Nora’s great grandfather, or the arrest of Gustav’s mother that create an admirable sense of the malleability of time and how it constantly reaches forward and influences its central characters (i.e., Gustav is a bad father who wrestles with the fact that he lost his mother at a critical early age). Trier lands on something quite novel in that Gustav, a truly sublime performance by Skarsgård it must be said, is an artist continually wrestling with real-world forces that he sees as compromising his art. In his youth, it’s the duties and expectations of raising a family that eventually drive him out of their home; in his twilight years, it’s the fragility of old age and no longer being the once invincible artist he was. Among the creative set, these are profound and clear fears, and to see them solidified on screen was savoring to be sure.
While Sentimental Value largely succeeds in its aims, because of its ensemble-based nature—in direct contrast to Trier’s most successful previous films—there is time spent with other characters, most notably Nora. And to be frank, I don’t believe those segments of the film hit the same profundity as those allowed to their patriarch. We’re constantly told about Nora’s own shortcomings, and while we occasionally are held witness to her own outbursts and reticence towards her father, the sense of her character feels more like something the audience is supposed to implicitly understand rather than feel. Surprisingly, the time spent with the other sister (Lilleaas’ Agnes) feels more worthy of our attention despite far less spotlight. A former child actress turned historian and mother comes across as the voice of reason between these two opposing forces and unwraps a sense of quiet depth that reminded me of the tranquil sort of writing that caused me to love Trier’s work in the first place. It’s an uneven experience, and to my mind a minor work, but if this is what gets him further recognition for his immense talents, I won’t blush too much.