When a young girl is asked to imagine the inner life of an inanimate object, she chooses her house: What does it feel like to have so much joy, sorrow, noise, and silence live within you all at once?
That is the question that opens writer-director Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” posed as we take in every small detail and defect of a home nestled in the middle of Oslo. The house belongs to filmmaker Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), though he left it behind 30 years ago, along with his wife Sissel and their daughters Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas).
After Sissel passes away, Gustav returns to Norway with plans to make an autobiographical comeback film in the family home. When he tells Nora, now an established actress still raging at his abandonment, that he wrote the lead role for her, she refuses to have anything to do with it.
This messy blend of family, art, memory, and reality fuels “Sentimental Value.” Trier is focused on how our performances throughout life—as child, partner, parent, and more—take their toll over time. When we first meet Nora, she is in the middle of a crippling bout of stage fright, an aversion to being seen that ripples through every aspect of her life. Agnes, seemingly more put together and accepting of their father, has a cathartic confrontation with Gustav cut short when her seven-year-old son enters the room, instantly snapping her back into “mom mode.”
Gustav, meanwhile, refuses to play the role he has been assigned, teaming up with an American actress (Elle Fanning) to complete his film. He is a man fighting against a world he no longer feels welcome in, flickering between bullish swagger and childlike fear as he tries to pull off one last masterwork. It is a staggering performance from Skarsgård, dismantling his innate gruffness to let the pain and fear lingering in Gustav slowly step out of the shadows.
As Trier bounces through the history of the house and its inhabitants, he frequently uses film and theater to disorient us. Scenes from movies are presented as memories. A tense family confrontation seamlessly transitions into an emotional breakdown during a play’s rehearsal.
All the world’s a stage here, but nowhere as much as that house. It is where these characters give the performances of their lives—trying desperately to tell their stories before the curtain comes down, the set is redesigned, and the next generation takes the lead.
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