Review: Sentimental Value

Image courtesy of MUBI.

Two things can simultaneously be true: Great art can make life more bearable and, to make great art, it helps to have lived experience. In other words, it sometimes takes some suffering to be able to produce the thing that makes suffering more endurable.

This concept is just one sliver of Joachim Trier's "Sentimental Value," which marks a high point in this director's career following "The Worst Person in the World," previously considered his high watermark. The picture is at once a dysfunctional family saga; a story obsessed with time, history, and place; a movie about making movies; a story about how art can possibly save your life - or, in this case, relationships; and how finding the truth in your art often comes from lived experience.

The film starts on a curious note as one of its lead characters, Nora (Renate Reinsve), narrates how when she was young a teacher asked her to imagine her self as an object and she chose her childhood home - which almost becomes one of the film's characters. 

The narration goes on to describe the changes in time to the house and its inhabitants, and throughout the course of the movie we learn of the tragedies and history that took place in that house when different generations of Nora's family lived there. This history contains an arrest by the Nazis, a suicide, a divorce, and a bond formed between two sisters - Nora and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas).

Shortly after this narration, we witness Nora, who's an actress, go through a complete freakout in which her stage fright - or possibly something else - prevents her from going on stage on the opening night of the play in which she's starring. After many uncomfortable minutes - and some assistance by other cast members, including her current lover, a married man named Jakob (Trier favorite Anders Danielsen Lie) - she manages to make it on stage.

Although neither Nora nor Agnes currently live there, they make their way to their childhood home for the funeral of their mother, a former psychiatrist. Out of the blue, their estranged father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgard), a movie director who hasn't made a film in nearly 15 years, shows up. Neither of the sisters are particularly pleased to see him, but Nora especially takes every opportunity to avoid him.

But she agrees to have lunch with Gustav, who shocks her when he tells her that he has written a screenplay for a new film that he believes to be his best work. It's autobiographical, he plans to shoot it in their childhood home, and he offers the lead role to Nora. While he tries to downplay any similarities, it's clear that the character is based on his mother, who lived a somewhat tragic existence. However, Nora wants nothing to do with the project.

At a screening for one of his old films, a Hollywood starlet named Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) is deeply moved and she introduces herself to Gustav. They spend a night wandering the beach and realize they are kindred spirits. Shortly thereafter, she is cast in the role that was originally written for Nora. Regardless of Nora's refusal to participate in the film, Gustav begins to maintain more of a presence - which it is noted was mostly missing from her and Agnes' childhood - in his daughter's lives.

The film is shot in such a way that it plays like a great work of literature. At the end of most scenes, there is a quick cut to black as if a chapter has ended. "Sentimental Value" seems to draw some obvious inspiration from the works of Ingmar Bergman, but while the film is melancholic, it is also often quite humorous. A joke involving the misrepresentation of the age of a chair in Gustav's house got a solid laugh during the screening I attended, but the inappropriate DVDs he purchases for Agnes' young son's birthday resulted in more than a few howls.

A film that is as talky as this one might seem to draw attention away from its impeccable craft, but Kasper Tuxen's lovely cinematography did not go unnoticed by me. The writing in the picture is strong and this is a film loaded with superb performances. Reinsve has been the lead in Trier's two most recent films and has knocked it out of the park both times, while Ibsdotter Lilleaas is wonderful as Agnes. Some of the film's best and most moving sequences involve the two sisters.

Fanning is very good as the American actress who tries - but can't quite seem to nail - the role that Gustav has written for his movie. Her scenes with Skarsgard are the other great pairing in the picture. And Skarsgard gives one of his finest performances as a man who has alienated most of those closest to him - watch him uncomfortably describe ad nauseam to his daughter why he can't stand going to the theater, her profession of choice, without groaning - but is still a person, like many of this film's characters, who is trying to do better.

"Sentimental Value" was one of the most acclaimed films of this year's Cannes Film Festival and it's easy to see why. This is an intelligent, complex, and beautifully shot and acted film about heartbreak, trauma, failure, forgiveness, and artistic expression. It's a film that is dialogue heavy but ends on a sequence in which no words are spoken, and yet so much is said. It's one of the year's best.