Trier’s family ties: ‘Sentimental Value’

Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” continues to make an award-season push for recognition as it expands to additional screens following its initial premiere in May at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was awarded the Grand Prix. Both longtime and more recent fans of the filmmaker will be dazzled by Trier’s command of the cinematic medium. The auteur, writing again with longtime collaborator Eskil Vogt, locates the sweet spot between image-driven storytelling and the intense, dialogue-rich melodrama embodied by a dream cast populated by familiar regulars as well as fresh newcomers to Trier’s cinematic universe. Some followers may prefer the new offering, which shifts focus from a single central character to a multigenerational family saga.

In the kind of arts-and-crafts metanarrative that propelled the likes of Fellini’s “8 ½” (1963) and Anderson’s “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou” (2004), “Sentimental Value” introduces viewers to Stellan Skarsgård’s aging film director Gustav Borg, whose surname deliberately matches the one bestowed by Ingmar Bergman on his “Wild Strawberries” protagonist Isak. Gustav, who left his young family years ago, has now circled back to adult daughters Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) following the death of their mother. Looming even larger as an actual site of connection is the family home, a spacious Oslo classic still legally owned by Gustav.

Gustav announces his eyebrow-raising plan to shoot a semiautobiographical feature using the house as the principal location. He also offers the lead role — partly based on Gustav’s mother — to Nora, who wants absolutely nothing to do with the production. Nora’s own success as a performer on television and live theatre is quintessential Trier/Vogt; she is introduced in a tour de force sequence tracking a demonic attack of stage fright that sparks with exquisitely excruciating suspense. The mysterious source of Nora’s self-doubt later becomes apparent as we see her in all kinds of painful conversations with Gustav. Neither can easily mend or reconcile personal feelings of abandonment or their family-business competition.

Reach HPR film critic Greg Carlson at [email protected].