Sentimental Value, directed by Joachim Trier, screened at the 56th edition of International Film Festival of India, Goa.
The film stars Renate Reinsve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Stellan Skarsgård and Elle Fanning in lead roles.
The film revolves around the lives of two sisters—Nora and Agnes—who, after losing their mother, find their estranged father Gustav returning to their lives.
Borrowing from an essay written by one of the characters of Sentimental Value as a child, where she personifies her house, Joachim Trier’s latest film is about the cracks that develop in the walls, and not just literal ones. The cracks gradually widen and outlive both the people who remain and those whose departure leaves the house a little lighter. People forget, but the house can tell a quarrel from noise, a shut from a slam—it remembers. It documents the decision that formed the first knot in the DNA of a bloodline, setting off a series of chain reactions across generations as it bears witness. With each new generation, new knots form, while people simultaneously tug at the old ones, trying to detangle. Some people eavesdrop across the wall, and those who do, become exceptionally saddled by the weight of existence.
The film revolves around the lives of two sisters—Nora (Renate Reinsve), and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas)—who, after losing their mother, find their estranged father Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård) returning to their lives. Gustav, once a legendary filmmaker, comes back with a script he claims to have written for Nora. When Nora, who is an actor, rejects that role, he gets a popular actress, Rachel Kemp (played by Elle Fanning) onboard, which further complicates his already fraught relationship with his daughters. In the process, people who tiptoe around each other, trying not to hurt, end up hurting. Questions meet silence; apologies never arrive in time—at least not in the form one hopes for.
It wouldn’t be accurate to say the movie is about any one thing, or that it simply traces the events leading up to or following a particular event or a moment. It is not just about a woman navigating complicated relationships while excelling in her career, or another tending to her family while managing her father’s whims and her sister’s fraying mental health. Nor is it only about a once-relevant film director’s attempt to “rage against the dying of the light”. It deftly imitates life by being all of these things at once—and more—unfolding inside a house that has been absorbing their generational trauma for decades.
The writers of the film, Trier and Eskil Vogt, take on quite a task by portraying the lives of multiple generations within the limited span of a feature, allowing us to glimpse what happened when and why. Occasionally, a narratorial voice serves as an interlocutor, leading us through the histories of the characters. Yet, every thread they pull to weave their narrative, regardless of its colour or texture, blends seamlessly. The things that do not get resolved within the span of this film are acknowledged as things that cannot be resolved; not for now anyway. And that is why the film feels so deeply true to life. Here, much like in life, what we can work on, we do; what we cannot, we hope.
Skarsgård’s Gustav Borg is so achingly nuanced that you can feel the crushing weight of his flight response parading itself as apathy. Feeling too much and not feeling much often share similar symptoms. His silences are replete with the plea of a once-absentee, now-desperate father trying to connect with his family—creatively, if not emotionally. A creative partnership is all a showbiz dad can offer for now; it is not quite up to us to decide whether that is enough. Skarsgård’s character embodies the painful urgency of time slipping away, and the truth that the time we have with one another is all we get. We make what we can of it. Then we let go.
Reinsve’s portrayal of Nora Borg is both nuanced and intense. She does not miss a beat in capturing the complexity of Nora’s emotional world. Nora is anxious moments before stepping onstage, yet utterly confident once she inhabits the challenging characters she chooses to play, like Medea. Much like Medea, her grief bleeds into anger. Her melancholy gives way to rage, then returns to melancholy again, until it finally edges toward hope. Having seen Reinsve capture the raw pulse of Nora, it is hard to imagine anyone else embodying her.
While mulling over the film, one finds oneself thinking about the emotional intelligence Trier demands from his audience. He does not indulge in the popular practice of breaking things down into bite-sized portions for easy consumption. One must spend time considering why he chose the title—is the house of sentimental value or is it in the script a father writes for his daughter? Is it one's memories of a time when grief did not touch and taint their evenings? But isn’t that the whole point of loving cinema as a medium? That rarely, you encounter a film like this that subtly shifts something in you in the two hours and fifteen minutes you spend staring at the screen.
In the end, Sentimental Value is a film that never loses sight of itself. It is less interested in resolution than in the gradual realisation that learning to live with one another is an uneven, complex, ever-evolving kind of kindness. People change, but houses remain, letting memory settle into the cracks of the walls. Salvation arrives as a small nod across a room—a reassurance that we have seen each other all along, even when we looked away. Hope stops by in the form of a hug, reminding us that we have not quite drowned yet. Trier’s brilliance lies in showing that reconciliation is a fragile practice, made up of these recognitions. And that is the film’s core truth. Sentimental value does not lie in objects alone, but in the courage it takes to return to one another again and again. Perhaps holding out hope is not entirely altruistic—we keep trying, even as some part of us still wants to drown.
Sritama Bhattacharyya has an M.Phil in Women’s Studies from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. She is currently an English Teacher based in Washington.
