I tend to think of “therapy through filmmaking” as a bad thing, by which I mean that artists with unresolved personal issues would do better to sort those matters out in private. Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” offers an inspiring exception, where the psychological health of its two main characters — filmmaker Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård) and his estranged daughter Nora (Renate Reinsve) — winds up inextricably tied up with a film project Gustav meant for them to make together. If it works here, that’s because we’re not obliged to watch Gustav’s movie, but the emotional behind-the-scenes story of reconciliation through art.
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While not as stylistically radical as Trier’s last film, “The Worst Person in the World,” this layered family-centric drama (which was also written by Eskil Vogt) shares its ability to find fresh angles on sentiments you’d think that cinema would have exhausted by now. Chief among the previous movie’s revelations was its star, Reinsve, who recalls the laid-back, lived-in and yet entirely modern allure of Diane Keaton during Woody Allen’s peak years, mixed with an unpredictability that can feel positively radiant one second and practically inconsolable the next.
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In “Sentimental Value,” one doesn’t have to look far to see the source of Nora’s torment: the dad who walked out on her family when she and younger sister Agnes were children. Gustav always put his work ahead of his personal life, but it’s been ages since he made a great movie. Now, at precisely the moment the girls’ mother (and his ex-wife) has died, he shows up with a screenplay he wants to shoot in the house where they grew up — a gorgeous two-story Dragestil mansion so significant to the story that it gets a poetic introduction all its own. Gustav wrote the lead role with Nora in mind, and we sense that accepting could save their relationship, if not both of their lives.
If that sounds a little dramatic, that’s only because you have yet to meet Nora, a jumble of nerves whose stage fright is so intense, it nearly craters her latest show on opening night. Not since “Birdman” has a director so deftly (or hilariously) captured the suffocating panic of a backstage breakdown, as she tears at her costume and begs a fellow actor to slip her some drugs, or else slap her. Whatever attracts her to pretending to be other people is clearly related to her discomfort at being herself. In any case, what we’re dealing with here is a highly agitated and restless personality.
Nora isn’t ready to forgive her father, so she passes on his project, thinking this will be the last she hears of it. Instead, she learns indirectly that the film is moving forward with American star Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) in the lead. To Nora, this feels no less a betrayal than cheating on her mom would have been. Indeed, there’s an element of seduction involved, as Trier reveals, pushing Nora to the background for a spell while focusing on the way Gustav convinces Rachel to take the part, and then manipulates her into playing it as Nora would. (Fanning interprets the role with total sincerity, when a shallow caricature might have better illustrated what an artistic compromise she represents.)
Gustav can charm when he wants to, but is also armed with witheringly unfiltered judgments toward everyone. Scenes of Gustav and Rachel feeling their way through his script, interrogating the characters’ motivations in rehearsal, encourage audiences to pose the same questions about the surrounding film. “Sentimental Value” could hardly be called unclear, but it leaves ample room for ambiguity and personal interpretation. It also strikes a surprising tone, opening with Terry Callier’s near-mystical folk track “Dancin’ Girl,” and sticking to the nostalgic sounds of an earlier generation (while also incorporating up-to-the-minute industry details like Netflix).
Skarsgård is such a great actor, it’s tempting to see “Sentimental Value” strictly as a father-daughter story — and Rachel’s arrival as a symbolic attempt to replace Nora — though Trier and Vogt are actually focused elsewhere. The more illuminating dynamic is the one between Nora and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas). Gustav’s departure all those years ago, coupled with their mother’s illness, forced a certain responsibility on Nora before she was ready to handle it, and now it’s Agnes who’s looking out for Nora.
As it turns out, Gustav has pulled this kind of stunt before. Among his artistic principles, foremost is that he film with friends; he prefers people he knows to professionals. When Agnes was a girl, he cast her in his most acclaimed film, an intense bonding experience that left her feeling abandoned when the projected ended and his attention went elsewhere. When Gustav asks to cast his grandson, Agnes’ only child, she shoots down the idea. But she recognizes that accepting the lead role might be therapeutic for Nora, who’s started to spiral amid the pressures of their mother’s death and father’s return.
To the extent that the Borg family home is a metaphor — with a none-too-subtle crack in its foundation — this one seems to be falling down around them. Maybe that’s a good thing, the movie argues, suggesting a model by which making art is a means of making amends.