“SENTIMENTAL VALUE”: A REMARKABLE MOVIE ABOUT FATHERS & DAUGHTERS & THE SECRETS THAT WE CAN’T ESCAPE
“I think it’s time you and I sat down and had a proper talk.” So says Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgard) to his daughter, Nora (Renate Reinsve), during the opening moments of Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value. It’s a loaded statement, particularly given father and daughter have not been able to communicate since she was young. Their vulnerability runs deep, so deep, in fact, that Nora has developed a fear of commitment, just as Gustav has developed a fear of intimacy. Gustav is a typical artist, tremendous with strangers, yet cold and distant when it comes to his relatives (unless he is speaking through his movies). Gustav is a director, and he is in his seventies. Nora, meanwhile, has become a theater actress, and she is in her thirties. At the beginning of Trier’s film, Nora’s mother has just died, and this is what forces Nora and Gustav to be in each other’s company. The two of them are attending a reception that is being held inside a house that has shouldered three generations of the Borg family. That house is large and cavernous, the kind of dwelling where the floorboards creak and the wind whistles in through uneven cracks. It’s a house where certain secrets remain hidden, even though certain other secrets are all but screaming to be unearthed. This is a house of trauma, yes, a malignant type of trauma that has resulted in both Nora and Gustav remaining cordial, and yet curt with each other. They exchange pleasantries, while doing their utmost not to touch on any pressure points.
In short order, we learn that Nora has been cast as one of the leads in a modern adaptation of The Seagull by Anton Chekhov. In this iteration, all of the set dressing is gothic. The house speakers are all blaring the main theme from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining just prior to curtain. And there are strobe lights, trigger-warning-level strobe lights. Onstage, Nora’s character shuns one admirer in deference to pursuing a forbidden romance. Offstage, Nora has been having an affair with her married co-star, Jakob. Time and again, Trier appears to be likening Nora to defiant female archetypes. A case in point. Gustav has completed a movie script that he plans on directing, and he has written the main character specifically for Nora. Gustav offers her the role, but she refuses. Soon after, Gustav becomes acquainted with an American film actress named Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning). Rachel admires Gustav, and Gustav, in turn, comes to view Rachel as a much more bankable stand-in for his daughter. On the night when Gustav and Rachel first meet, they party on a beach until the break of day, after which Rachel gets whisked away in a horse-drawn curricle. Trier shoots Rachel from behind, set against a dreamlike sea and a windswept sky. This is an allusion to Medea fleeing Colchis in a divine chariot, an episode that has been depicted repeatedly throughout history. Later in the movie, Gustav actually refers to Medea during a conversation with Nora. Medea the bold. Medea the manipulator. Medea the estranged daughter of a king who was forced to seek asylum after bringing shame upon the crown.
Nora has a sister named Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas). Agnes is married and she has a career as a therapist. When Nora and Agnes were both children, Gustav would take them with him to his film sets, and he would even cast them in what were minor, if not memorable, roles. This was a form of self-expression for Gustav, perhaps his only means of communicating certain truths that he could not bear to utter on his own. Agnes understood this, whereas Nora viewed those experiences as further evidence of her father’s ambivalence toward them. And so now here they are, two decades down the line, having arrived at a place where Gustav is searching for a surrogate daughter and Nora is searching for a surrogate father, and Agnes is doing her utmost not to get caught up in the dirt. Those are the basics, although the beauty of Sentimental Value is that it only reveals the emotional depth of its characters in morsels. Rachel Kemp is instrumental in this regard. Time and again, she succeeds in bringing out a softer side of Gustav, along with a more contemplative side of Nora. In Gustav and Rachel, one can see shades of Sofia Coppola, most notably Lost in Translation. In Nora and Rachel, one can see shades of Ingmar Bergman, most notably Persona.
Joachim Trier is at his Oscar-level best with Sentimental Value. It is the pacing. It is the subtle blue of twilight. It is the telling of a story with equal measures of integrity and care. Stellan Skarsgard delivers his best performance in decades. But the real story here is Renate Reinsve, a Norwegian actress who originally came to prominence thanks to Trier’s previous movie, The Worst Person In the World (2021). In Reinsve, Trier has found his muse. Reinsve can achieve more with a glance than the majority of actors can achieve with a megaphone. Her performance throughout Sentimental Value is both uninhibited and immersive. It is seamless. And at 37, it would appear as if Reinsve is finally going to receive the recognition that she deserves.
Sentimental Value opens in New York City and Los Angeles this Friday, November 7th, and it will open nationwide on November 14th.
