Rating: ****
The Norwegian Oscar entry Sentimental Value directed by Joachim Trier who co-wrote it with Eskil Vogt, is sure to reach the Top 5 nominations for the Oscar for the Best International Film. It is a film with soaring emotions and exhilarating touchdowns.
But it is not as good as our own Homebound which is our proud Oscar entry.
That said, Sentimental Value sets a very high benchmark for films on a dysfunctional family. The actors are magnificent ,especially the seasoned Stellan Skarsgård as Gustav Borg and the relatively reclusive Renate Reinsve as his daughter.
Their emotional clash reminds us of the labyrinth of relationships in Ingmar Bergman’s cinema.Indeed Joachim Trier is the true inheritor of the Bergman legacy. Trier looks deep into the human heart and manifests what he sees without prejudice.
The family in Sentimental Value feels lived-in, real in a way it seldom does in cinema.The camera(Kasper Tuxen) doesn’t stand back respectfully as the family fights its battles. It plunges into the very epicentre of the tension like a member of the family.
It is interesting how the family home becomes a living character. The people in the house are seen as travellers in the journey of life.
The writing is vivid and penetrating. Every character has a voice far beyond the spoken one. The tension between the characters—Nora and her sister Agnes(Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), Nora and her father Gustav, Nora and her married lover Jakob(Anders Danielsen Lie) and between Gustav and his wife in the past Sissel(Ida Marianne Vassbotn Klasson)—underscores the ruptured relationships without over-punctuating them.
Everything in Sentimental Value feels organic, even when the American actress Rachel Camp(Elle Fanning, venturously likeable) arrives she feels like an intruder whose presence defines the Jakob’s Norwegian family.
Jakob signs the saleable Rachel to make a film on his mother’s life(and suicide) after his daughter Nora says no. The frisson between the daughter and the actress who replaces her, and this compromised casting qualifies the louring conflicts in the plot.
This is a film best savoured without distraction. Step out or get distracted, and I promise you: you will miss something vital. It won’t hurt the Borg family. But any digression will damage your relations with the Borg family.
