‘Why didn’t our childhood ruin you?‘
Danish filmmaker Joachim Trier has already received awards recognition for his brilliant 2021 film, The Worst Person in the World, so it’s perhaps no surprise that Sentimental Value, the follow-up to that film, has been showered with praise, culminating in nine Oscar nominations. While the film is very challenging, very European, it’s also incredibly effective at portraying complicated family dynamics and the impact of prioritising art over everything else…
Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård), a celebrated film director, seeks to cast his semi-estranged daughter, Nora (Renate Reinsve), in a film about the tragic suicide of his mother. She is reluctant, mainly because Gustav has been a pretty rotten father, and this leads to the casting of American actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) in her place.
Reinsve was excellent in her previous collaboration with Trier and she is the standout performer here. The scenes that she shares with Skarsgard are so steeped in subtext and barely concealed resentment that they’re actually tough to watch at times. It makes an interesting comparison with something like Hamnet, which also portrayed a family in crisis but in a way that was much less authentic and compelling. The sisterly relationship between Nora and Agnes (Inga Lilleaas) also convinces, the shared glances at their father’s latest ridiculous behaviour will be familiar to anyone who has a sibling. Elsewhere, Fanning, an actor who surely has an Oscar win in her own future on the cards at some point, is as dependable as ever and offers an outsider’s perspective and some much-needed respite from the punishing family drama that plays out for the rest of the film.
Sentimental Value is not a film that I’d rush to watch again, but as a true slice-of-life family drama, it’s incredibly effective.
