Review | “Sentimental Value”: A full house, a full movie

by Luke Cone

Photo courtesy of Neon

I’ve always been interested in architecture, especially the architecture of houses. There is something about a place where a person lives that offers a special insight into their life and can tell a story about them that would otherwise go untold. 

But architecture can only tell so much. A house on its own, without anyone living in it, is just four walls, some windows and a roof.

Central to Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” is a beautiful Norwegian home built in “dragestil,” translated as “dragon style.” Over the course of the film, we get to see every crack, hear every creaky floorboard and feel every ray of sunshine shining through its wide windows. 

It’s truly remarkable for a film to pay such attention to its setting, down to its most minute details and sensations. This feeling stands out in today’s day and age, where more and more of the stuff we watch feels like it’s been filmed in empty, lifeless soundstages or in front of LED walls. 

The film follows the characters who live in the home — the Borg family — with a particular focus on the relationship between actress Nora Borg (Renate Reinsve) and her father, the highly respected auteur director Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård). Gustav left Nora and her sister, Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), when they were children, to focus on his filmmaking career. As he says in the film: “You can’t write Ulysses and drive the kids to soccer practice.” Following the death of Nora and Agnes’ mother, he reenters their life, hoping to make amends as well as recruit Nora to star in his next film. 

At first, Nora refuses the role. For her, the gesture is not enough to fill the void that his absence created in her life. But, as the story progresses, she realizes that playing the character which Gustav has written for her, and which bears a striking resemblance to her own life, might be the very thing she needs to move forward. 

After Nora refuses the role, Gustav replaces her with American actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), but finds her ill-equipped. And so, just as Nora needs Gustav’s art to process her life, Gustav needs Nora to make his art. Like a house needs its occupants, they need each other, and their struggle to properly express that need makes for a compelling central conflict. Such is the paradoxical relationship between art and life that Trier presents in the film: the source of so much pain in Nora’s life — her father’s filmmaking — ends up being the source of her healing, too. 

Part of the magic of Sentimental Value — which is what makes it difficult to critique — is that it all feels like it was naturally created. One element bleeds into another, which bleeds into another, which leads to the film that lies in front of you, like layers of paint added over time. 

The setting feels real and lived-in, which lends itself well to the warm and grounded cinematography. The editing, though noticeable in a few key moments, is largely invisible — like it’s a river flowing in time. The directing, while certainly not detached, is so in tune with the emotion of the actors that it, too, feels invisible at times. 

If you tried to align the movie with a traditional three-act structure, it might crumble in your hands, but that doesn’t really matter. The film has its own structure, like the house it is centered around. Each scene is like a room, with its own secrets and feelings – its own layers of paint to add on or strip away.

“Sentimental Value” might not be for you. You might find it slow or hard to decipher. The characters are difficult, and at times feel like the worst people in the world (real Trier heads will understand this reference). But if you are like me — fascinated by the making of art as much as the art itself, by the houses that people live in as much as the people that live in them and the ways in which one informs the other — I highly recommend this film to you.