Sentimental Value: When creativity becomes a family inheritance

Joachim Trier’s, Sentimental Value dazzled at Cannes last year, garnering a 19-minute standing ovation and the festival’s Grand Prix with a nuanced and delicate portrayal of the story of a home and the lives that come with it. The film focuses on the relationships between a pair of sisters, Nora and Agnes, and their estranged filmmaker father, Gustav, who reappears after the death of their mother.

In another director’s hands, Sentimental Value could have been a sprawling tale of the history of a house and the lineage that has trodden its floors, but Joachim Trier instead handles the film with just what his title suggests: a sentimentality that never comes across as schmaltzy or simplistic, but quite the opposite. This is a quiet film that lets you learn from its characters. The Norwegian director shows confidence in his decisions and makes a 133-minute runtime feel brisk.

Sentimental Value places its central attention on a trio of actors performing at the height of their powers. Renate Reinsve gave a stellar performance in Trier’s last feature The Worst Person in the World, and here she delivers another deeply rich performance as Nora, where you learn just as much from the moments she is silent as from those where she speaks. Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas plays Agnes, Nora’s sister and the steady heartbeat of the film, a character whose problems do not seem so outwardly evident at the beginning but who is able to conjure heartfelt emotions by the end. Finally, there is Stellan Skarsgård as the pair’s father and an ageing filmmaker, Gustav. Skarsgård steadily treads the line between insufferable deadbeat dad and ageing charmer as he confronts the life he has lived and the mistakes he has made. All three actors are at their best when alongside each other, creating a dysfunctional family that cannot quite figure out how to make things right.

Also worth mentioning is Elle Fanning, who is caught in the crossfire as the star of Gustav’s upcoming film. Fanning works well as an outsider in this family affair and helps to add depth to both Reinsve and Skarsgård’s characters.

At its core, Sentimental Value feels like a film about how creativity is a family affair. Nora is an actress, Gustav is a director, and both of them cannot seem to communicate through their common ground. It is a complex feeling to be so genetically close to someone yet lack the language to speak to them, and Trier curates this estrangement within the family dynamics brilliantly. The film also deals expertly with the importance of the home as a figurative value in someone’s life. Throughout the film, we are shown snippets and flashbacks to the house at the centre of the story at different points in time. We see how the posters on the walls change, how the music on the record player changes, and how, over time, the people change. The film speaks to the special occasions that happen in our homes and the special things we fill them with, while also exploring the sadness and pain that can be caused and trapped inside the places we come from.

Overall, Joachim Trier crafts a film that places its performers at the forefront of a story about the power of nuance, creativity and family. He allows the audience to sit with the emotional conflict and creates a piece of work that should be viewed with an extremely appropriate Sentimental Value.

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