Euronews Culture's Film of the Week: 'Sentimental Value' - Healing family burns through art

There’s a Norwegian proverb, brent barn skyr ilden, that translates as: “A burned kid avoids nan fire.”

This is astatine nan bosom of Joachim Trier’s latest seriocomedy, Affeksjonsverdi (Sentimental Value), arsenic nan characteristic Nora (Renate Reinsve) has been burned by her father, Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård).

A famed director, he abandoned some Nora and her younger sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) when they were young, to amended prioritise his career. He comes backmost into their lives astatine their mother’s wake, and alternatively of affectional support, presents his eldest pinch a proposition.

In a bid to revive his profession and unafraid his creator legacy, he’s written an autobiographical screenplay. Considering Nora is simply a talented shape actress, Gustav wants her to play nan domiciled of his mother, who took her ain life successful nan family location in Oslo. He moreover wants to shoot the movie wrong nan girls’ puerility home.

“I wrote it for you and you’re nan only 1 who tin play it,” he tells his girl astir his comeback project, reaching retired to her successful nan only measurement he knows how. Clumsily.

After small consideration, she refuses nan part: “I can’t activity pinch him. We can’t really talk.”

This prompts Gustav to formed up-and-coming Hollywood character Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) instead, who he meets during a retrospective of his films. Not a move that will thief mend nan affectional rift pinch his daughters...

Four years aft Reinsve won nan Best Actress prize astatine Cannes for her capacity successful Trier’s The Worst Person successful nan World, the Norwegian duo reunite for this communicative that explores dysfunctional family dynamics. It’s a winning combination, not conscionable because Sentimental Value won this year’s Cannes Grand Prix (essentially 2nd spot to nan Palme d’Or), but because Reinsve is, arsenic always, a magnetic surface presence.

Convincing arsenic a talented character suffering worry attacks and having an matter pinch joined character Jakob (Anders Danielsen Lie, a regular Trier player), Reinsve manages to convey some desperation astatine nan truth she has semi-followed successful her father’s creator footsteps arsenic good arsenic an unaffected region Nora intelligibly uses as a defence mechanism. Like Julie successful The Worst Person successful nan World aliases Elizabeth successful Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel’s Armand (2024), Reinsve makes her characters travel disconnected arsenic real, flawed and manages to hint astatine layers of buried trauma without toppling into mawkishness.

As for Skarsgård, he is fascinating arsenic nan estranged begetter you want to hate. It’s conscionable that nan character won’t fto you.

Gustav’s casting petition becomes progressively problematic considering this is simply a self-involved man who didn’t watch his girl turn up. He is besides stubborn successful his inability to straight reside nan sins of his past and alternatively seeks a shape of reconciliation done creation – his movie seeming for illustration nan cathartic buoy he clings onto, convinced that reality tin beryllium mended done artificiality. And yet, done Skarsgård’s talents arsenic a performer, you ne'er uncertainty his genuineness aliases his charming ham-handedness, arsenic seen successful a hilarious, cinephile-tickling segment successful which he earnestly offers DVDs of The Piano Teacher and Irréversible arsenic an outrageously inappropriate day coming to Agnes’ 10-year-old son, Erik (Oyvind Hesjedal Loven). Again, this is simply a man who leans connected creation to effort to link pinch others connected an affectional level. It’s a frustrating trait that hardly masks his inability to articulate his feelings, but not 1 you ever judge him for.

The fascinating move betwixt nan begetter and girl (as good arsenic nan moving scenes betwixt Nora and Agnes) are not only down to nan actors, but besides a terrific book co-written by Trier and his longtime screenwriting partner Eskil Vogt. Both create nuanced characters and equilibrium nan intergenerational family trauma pinch patient lashings of caustic humour throughout. Without sacrificing knotty relationships done comedy, Trier and Vogt guarantee that Sentimental Value achieves existent affectional resonance. 

As affecting and meticulously orchestrated arsenic nan movie is, location are a fewer bum notes on nan way.

Sentimental Value tin get bogged down by an excessive magnitude of clip spent connected nan accumulation of Gustav’s (Netflix financed) film, arsenic good arsenic respective detours regarding nan trauma nan Borg family inherited from Nazi persecution. As captious arsenic nan inheritance is and really generational history feeds into nan value of nan location successful this film, arsenic a surviving point that some internalises and externalises its occupants’ states of being, a batch of this accusation feels a small excessively literal astatine times. Moreover, these digressions and immoderate overt references to Ingmar Bergman – particularly erstwhile nan faces of nan begetter and his 2 daughters morph into each different astatine 1 constituent - detract from nan film’s core: nan value of tenderness and nan vulnerability basal for relationships to surpass burns and statesman to heal.

That said, and contempt a predictable denouement you’ll person guessed by nan extremity of nan first act, Sentimental Value does travel together arsenic mature ode to trying one’s champion and how, successful immoderate cases, life and creation tin converge to create thing bigger. And hardened is your bosom if that sparkling and subtly devastating past changeable doesn’t tease your tear ducts.

As they say, etter regn kommer sol. “After rainfall comes sun.”

Affeksjonsverdi (Sentimental Value) premiered astatine this year's Cannes Film Festival. It is presently retired successful cinemas successful France and Belgium. It continues its theatrical rollout successful Norway, Sweden and Greece this period and hits cinemas successful US, UK and Germany successful December.