Sentimental Value
Joachim Trier’s latest is a moving exploration of fractured families and the growing pains that tear us apart long after adolescence
Now a cosy mausoleum of memories sedimented in time, this red two-storey house lies empty after Nora and Agnes's mum, Sissel, passes away. Career-driven Nora, a melancholy actress with depression and stage fright, longs for a place to belong, while her younger sister, Agnes, who is a historian, has managed to build a loving family upon the ruins of their parents' marriage. Despite their differences, these sisters share a close bond, with their dialogue guaranteed to strike a chord with anyone who has grown up in a broken home, figuratively or otherwise.
Much like the foundational cracks in property, the fractures in this family's relationships are exposed when Gustav returns to Oslo with the intention of turning the house into the set of his new film project. With a bleakly amusing, affecting script that rejects all embellishments, Trier and Vogt carve their way into the unspoken truths of parents and children. These are the blanks one tries vainly to fill after it's too late, with mortality looming large on Sentimental Value and its Oslo house.
The movie goes back in time to the house's various occupants, including Gustav's mum Karin, who died by suicide there. A Nazi prisoner who endured unspeakable torture, Karin is the subject of Gustav's upcoming film, but there's more to his emotionally ambitious plan to revive his career. Larger-than-life, Gustav would rather put on a big Netflix production with an American star, Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), than go to therapy and admit to his children and himself that he messed up. He's a man who struggles to take accountability for his problematic ways, though Skarsgård infuses the character with a palpable fragility and an endearing quality.
What could mend his fraught bond with his daughters, particularly Nora, seems out of reach for Gustav, but is apparent to an external observer like Fanning's Rachel. She stands on the doorstep of the Oslo home — a strategic viewpoint in a house whose inhabitants tend to run away — dissecting the familial dynamics with lucidity and candour. Agnes possesses the same kind of emotional intelligence, guarding a world of her own as she mitigates her sister's and father's outbursts and insufferable common traits.
In a host of beautifully restrained performances, Reinsve delivers another knockout turn. More than a virtual sequel to The Worst Person in the World, Sentimental Value peels layers off the Messy Woman cliché with devastating honesty. Reinsve's raw performance vibrates with bubbling resentment – towards her dad and herself, but not towards the house, a cocoon of timber and concrete that has held her on her worst days and a place she's learning to let go of.
Released 26 Dec by MUBI; certificate 15