Home Wrecked
By Eileen G’Sell
Sentimental Value
Dir. Joachim Trier, Denmark, NEON
Joachim Trier believes in ghosts. Not wraiths wailing below the floorboards, but the specters of cultural and familial history that silently haunt humans and their homes. In The Worst Person in the World, an omniscient older woman (Ine Jansen) relays the narratives of the heroine’s female ancestors, conveying the wildly shifting challenges for women across eras. In the Norwegian director’s latest film, Sentimental Value, another anonymous matriarch (Bente Børsum) recounts in voiceover the story of a grand Oslo manse and its dolorous inhabitants—who give life and take their own within the same papered walls.
Whereas, in his past films, Trier (and, frequently, co-writer Eskil Vogt) has plumbed the vicissitudes hidden within a single protagonist, Sentimental Value explores the interiorities of four key characters: Nora Borg(Renate Reinsve), an acclaimed thespian with debilitating stage fright; Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), her well-adjusted, but overburdened younger sister; Gustav Borg (Stellan SkarsgĂĄrd), their estranged father, a once-famous filmmaker; and Rachel (Elle Fanning), an American starlet who longs to act in more meaningful movies.
When Gustav shows up at the family house for the funeral repast for his ex-wife, it prompts a reckoning for which neither Nora nor Agnes is fully prepared. As it turns out, he has an ulterior motive for his return: convincing Nora to star in his planned comeback movie, ostensibly written with her in mind. Nora tells her father that she wants nothing to do with it, so Gustav shifts his eyes instead toward the ebullient actress Rachel Kemp, whom he meets at a Cannes-like retrospective for his films. Upon learning that his film will star an American movie star and be shot in their family home, Gustav’s daughters are more than a little ambivalent. Trier seems to be confronting the extent to which life and art coalesce in the lives of creative families, dangling the question of whether artistic genius can redeem one’s personal sins.
Some critics have called Sentimental Value Trier’s most ambitious film, and perhaps it is in terms of budget and internationally recognizable cast. But as far as its characters and narrative framework are concerned, the film feels more predictable than Trier’s past work, relying on fairly familiar archetypes and expected story beats. We have the entitled patriarch who wants to turn things around (reminiscent of both Paul Thomas and Wes Anderson); an indignant daughter who can’t let the past die (redolent of roles Tilda Swinton has played in more than one film). In a more grandiose turn, the trauma of suicide is set against the trauma of Nazi torture against members of the Norwegian Resistance, which is set against the trauma of obsolescence as an aging auteur. Rather than prioritize the emotional potency of individual character arcs, as Trier did in Thelma (2017) or The Worst Person in the World, Sentimental Value continually circles back to Big Themes for a sense of gravitas—yet another being meta-theatricality, as foregrounded by Nora’s performances bookending scenes, along with the Ibsenesque tenor of the name itself.
While also a common motif in European arthouse fare, the film’s soft lampooning of the Hollywood movie industry is nevertheless entertaining. When Rachel openly gushes over a twentieth-century Borg film, her American English sounds almost instantly mawkish. So, too, does Borg seem hilariously out of touch when apprised that his new film, produced by Netflix, might not enjoy a theatrical release. But whereas other European directors might turn Rachel into a parody of American vapidity, Trier treats her with a complexity that might surprise those unacquainted with the director’s history of well-rounded female characters. In turn, Fanning imbues her role with the gravity it deserves. “I really don’t think you want me for this role,” she tells Borg nervously, her hair dyed a mousy brown upon his recommendation. She, like his daughters, sees through his lofty pronouncements. But unlike them, she can move on unscathed from the disappointment.
Despair begets despair—but art, the film promises, may yet still save us. If this doesn’t feel entirely earned, it’s partly because everybody is healed by the end. But it might also be that several characters—most frustratingly, Nora, who gets the most screen time—aren’t fleshed out enough for us to care whether they healed at all. When Nora tears up after bidding adieu to her doting eight-year-old nephew, her reaction is dismissed as mere “loneliness.” When her depression comes up later in the film, it seems to be pinned hazily to her parents’ fighting and general family track record; like in a television ad for SSRIs, mental illness is represented by a barefaced brunette in a shapeless sweater—evidence enough that something’s awry. Compared to Agnes, an academic historian who both admires her father and resents his manipulative tendencies, Nora feels severely underwritten, such that even Reinsve’s naturally emotive mien and cogent delivery cannot compensate. It says a lot that Nora’s most moving scenes onscreen are when she’s inhabiting another character. We never see her break through on her own terms, and the film suffers for it.
Trier’s earlier films, like The Oslo Trilogy and Louder than Bombs (2015), explored vulnerability in ways that felt fresh and often unsettling. Sentimental Value, on the other hand, feels like a lot of movies I’ve seen before: movies about dysfunctional bourgeois families where divorce looms in the background like stately crown molding. While chock full of pathos, these films tend to be fairly formulaic, assuring by the end that, however broken, the home is still where the heart is, and families, however fraught, are always worth fighting for. Sentimental Value does just that, and in my screening at least, sniffles were frequently audible in the audience.
My own sentiments were hit hardest when the Borg manor endures a gut renovation for the sake of his film production, its eclectically textured interior transformed into an AirSpace version of itself, all gleaming stainless steel and soulless whites. If this was supposed to suggest a fresh start and a happy ending, I suppose you can have it. I prefer my endings as I do my Trier: cobwebbed with swatches of fading color, and always a little bit haunted.