Sentimental Value

“Sentimental Value” is correctly billed as both a comedy and a drama but it begins in the vein of horror as Nora Borg (Renate Reinsve), a theatre actor, seized by stage fright in the moments just before the first performance of her new play, is wrangled into her place in the nick of time by the cast and crew after multiple attempts to flee. There is a discernible air of theatricality to this freakout, however, underlined in how the crew seems to take it in stone-faced professional stride, as if flipping out is how she finds her nerve, a little like the beginning of “The Insider” where Mike Wallace argues with the Ayatollah’s bodyguard to get his heart started. Indeed, it is telling that we hardly see Nora’s actual performance, just this one before it, an evocative delineation of how Joachim Trier’s Scandinavian drama takes place at the intersection of art and life. Not long after, Nora’s father Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), an acclaimed film director, returns home for his ex-wife’s funeral after walking out on her and Nora and Nora’s sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) many years ago. But instead of making amends as one might expect, he makes a movie pitch to Nora, asking her to star in what he hopes will be his comeback film as none other than his own mother who committed suicide when he was just a boy with plans to shoot it in the very same house where the act took place.

Gustav is seeking a cinematic exorcism by way of a cinematic seance, or something, but Nora turns him down flat, and the way Reinsve has her mouth fall open, just slightly, when he proposes his idea becomes one small gesture that cracks open a whole portal into the emotional damage he inflicted. In lieu of casting her, he casts an American star, Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), seeking a different kind of work and inspired by one of Gustav’s earlier movies that starred Agnes before she chose to eschew acting. The sequences in which Gustav and Rachel prepare and rehearse in his mother’s house become a weird kind of voodoo in which we see not only him trying to resuscitate his mother but cast someone else in the role of his daughter. When Rachel achieves an emotional breakthrough in rehearsal, it is affecting, for her and the others around her, all except for Gustav, who seems to feel nothing at all, for one cruel moment seeming to suggest that an artist cannot manufacture his or her own closure.

Gustav is a real piece of work, as they say, and Skarsgård’s performance lives it. He tells Nora that in first seeing an actor perform, he can judge within a matter of minutes whether they are any good or not, and it is that sort of haughty judgement with which Skarsgård plays the entire part. When Gustav meets with Nora, the scene is no different, really, than how he rehearses later with Rachel, suggesting this is how he views all of life, as a rehearsal, a working through, a movie set where he is assigning his own kin motivation. He even casts Agnes’s son in a small role in his burgeoning film, hearkening back to his relationship with Agnes when she was young, forging connection through work. Yet, if Trier comes across primed to dissect the real-world limits of his character’s approach, he pulls each punch he has so shrewdly set up. The denouement of “Sentimental Value” is altogether just so easy, every piece fitting snugly into place, even the usurping of the home not being where heart is cliche. Art can heal all wounds, it seems to say, with something like the kind of shrugging smile Gustav often employs, and is why I cannot help but feel convinced this movie is going to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.