Sentimental Value (Affeksjonsverdi)

Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), a once-famous fimmaker, offers the lead role in his comeback film, the story of his own mother, to his actor daughter Nora (Renate Reinsve). They are not close though, as he had abandoned his family when Nora and her sister were still young, and she refuses. Hollywood actress Rachel (Elle Fanning), however, is interested.

Inspired by the lives of archetypal, dominant male directors such as Ingmar Bergman, both admired for their work and notoriously ruthless as human beings and neglectful of their families, Sentimental Value explores the child in them, the “sentimental” baggage that, yes, partly explains the armor they built as they went through life. Easier to spontaneously empathise with are, of course, the collateral victims of the selfish man: his daughters, who each adopted different methods to make it to adulthood without fatherly care. For one, it’s the reassurance of the traditional family structure, as a priority. For the other, who was burdened by the added responsibility of being, as the elder child, the protector, the life of an artist. An actor, of course, justified in its exploration of as many versions of life as possibly, hoping that some can be her shelter.

Joachim Trier and his writing partner Eskil Vogt have always been wonderful writers, able to pen convincingly nuanced and complex portraits of women. They reunite here with Renate Reinsve, who garnered worldwide attention for her perforance in Trier’s last film The Worst Person in the World. And indeed, the depiction of sisterly bond is probably the most moving dimension of this multi-layered film, which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, and whose main subject is probably the reconciliatory power of art.

Winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.

This screening is supported by the Embassy of Sweden in Ireland and the Goethe-Institut Irland.