Sentimental Value won the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival thanks to the three central performances by Renate Reinsve, Elle Fanning and Stellan Skarsgård. Director Joachim Trier has a real talent for pulling out the emotional subtexts of ordinary lives and figuring out why people make the choices we do, even if we’ve forgotten. This time this includes some vintage chat-show footage of Mr. Skarsgård, famous in Scandinavia decades before he ever was in the English-speaking world, though the impact is lessened by the news in the end credits that they were altered using CGI. But this is somehow appropriate for the ways in which an old story is altered depending on who is listening.
Sisters Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) were raised in a gorgeous, enormous, three-story gingerbread house in Oslo by their mother, who has very recently died. As they make plans to sell it, they are surprised to discover their absentee father Gustav (Mr. Skarsgård) remains its owner. He is a world-famous movie director, whose career now mainly involves talking about how amazing he used to be. He was also a pretty rotten dad, though Agnes did star in one of his movies as a child. In adulthood Agnes has an ordinary job and an ordinary family life and is very happy, if in need of money. Meanwhile Nora, whose life is less happy, has become a well-known stage actress, working in the national theatre in modern versions of the old standards, and where one of her colleagues is played by Anders Danielsen Lie, who also starred with Ms. Reinsve in worldwide smash The Worst Person in the World. But this is no retread of that movie’s emotional notes; instead this is – on the surface – an examination of what happens when regional success unexpectedly goes global. Gosh, wonder why.
At a film festival, Gustav ends up having dinner with Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), the huge American superstar who finds herself quite taken with him and his work. He’s gotten financing for a screenplay about his mother, who killed herself in that lovely gingerbread house when he was a child, and wants to film it there with Nora playing her own grandmother. But Nora wants nothing to do with this. So when Rachel gushes about how much she’d like to work with Gustav, he can’t help but offer the part to her instead. Rachel has never even been to Norway and can’t tell the difference between a family heirloom and something from Ikea. But once a train is in motion, it’s very hard to stop.
It’s also hard to stand up to a man who swoops in to a nine year old’s birthday party with a couple of DVDs so the kid can learn about women. This got one of the biggest laughs of the entire festival even if you didn’t notice the movies were sadomasochistic Austrian thriller The Piano Teacher and Irreversible, in which men do unspeakable things to Monica Bellucci. (Fortunately nobody has a DVD player anymore.) As time passes the entire family is surprised to see Gustav build a genuine rapport with his grandson, and certainly be more attuned to the kid than he ever was to his daughters. Agnes is pragmatic about this but Nora is furious, and quite rightly. As the older daughter she was the one who understood what was going on between her parents, and she was the one who had to protect her little sister. She is also the one with whom Gustav is trying to fix things. But forgiveness has to be earned, which involves more effort than Gustav is generally capable of sustaining in his personal life, and Nora is not in a forgiving mood.
While the entire movie is clearly all about the problems of success, its bite comes from the difficult family dynamics. Nora is jealous of Agnes’ happy family life and can’t work out why she hasn’t been able to supplement her successful career with a successful relationship. There’s a bigger kick to Nora’s resentment about how Gustav’s selfishness spoiled her childhood, mostly because that is entirely justified. This is a man who, when cleaning up a spill on a table, drops the entire roll of paper towels on it sideways rather than pulling off one or two to wipe things up. It’s hard to overstate how self-centered he is. If he must make his autobiographical movie in English to accommodate Rachel, or hire a younger cinematographer instead of his disabled best friend to deliver the shooting style he wants, well then that’s what it takes. Except he wants his daughters to love him, and it’s unclear whether he’ll do what that takes, too.
Under all of this is a subplot about research Agnes is doing into what Gustav’s late mother endured during the second world war, and the role the house and its neighbors might have played in her death. The poem by Philip Larkin about man handing misery down to man feels appropriate here. But we forget that we also have the capacity to hand down love, and luckily the sisters do spare time from their daddy issues to think about their mother. And circling the edges is Rachel, wondering what kind of accent she should use and listening with big eyes as Gustav holds forth.
Ms. Fanning is one of those actors who elevates everything she’s in, and it’s easy to forget how young she is because of how long she has been working. She holds her own against Mr. Skarsgård, who seems to be taking great joy in showing off how an incredible actor can make difficult things seem fresh and easy. Ms. Ibsdotter Lilleaas has the least showy part but she grounds the entire film with her calm. And then there’s Ms. Reinsve, a real movie star who pulls and keeps focus with the subtlest of moves. Mr. Trier co-wrote the screenplay with frequent collaborator Eskil Vogt, and you have the sense here there’s a gang of friends who love working together at play here, but who always make room for new companions in the sandbox. The title rather hints at the mood of the ending – not that there’s anything wrong with that – but at least it feels hard-earned instead of schmaltzy. Though if you are turned off by the sentiments here you can at least spend your time admiring that truly gorgeous house.
Sentimental Value (Affeksjonsverdi) recently played at the Cannes Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the Cannes site for the title.
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