Cannes Hit Sentimental Value Might Be the Best Film You See All Year
What follows is a film about the process of making a movie, and also of choosing not to make one. Nora continues acting onstage, having an affair with her married colleague (Anders Danielsen Lie, in a brief but effective part, with the pair's chemistry still unmatched) and pondering her father's motivations. All the while, the 70-year-old Gustav assembles his team, reckons with the notion of his own mortality, and sets about nailing his film's ending, a sequence in which his protagonist hangs herself in the very same room where Gustav's real-life mother committed the same act when he was a child.
Is this film about Nora? Is it actually about Gustav's mother? Is it, in fact, about Gustav himself? And what, exactly, is he trying to do in making it? What is he trying to fix? What wound is he trying to close? Rachel tells him that she doesn't understand her character's thought process: Why would she do this when she, in this story, has a young son? Gustav doesn't seem to know either—but he knows it can happen, because it happened to him.
Via historical flashbacks that unfold in the same house, and documents later unearthed by Agnes, we learn more about Gustav's mother: a renegade who defied the Nazis and was imprisoned and brutally tortured as a result. We begin to understand how she could've been driven to such lengths, but Sentimental Value doesn't offer straightforward answers, either. It is content to simply let us wade into these deep waters and take it all in.
Its nimble twists and turns are enthralling and the script, co-written by Trier and Eskil Vogt, profoundly affecting and often hilarious (including a meta joke about Gustav's lyrical script being slightly overwritten), but it's the performances that make this film a masterpiece. Lilleaas is a clear standout, measured and subtle, as the sister more willing to give Gustav a chance, but one who still feels the ache of his abandonment. It's a thrill, too, to see Skarsgård taking a break from his Dune mud bath for one of the meatiest parts he's had in years, and infuse it with all of his natural charisma and gravitas, laced with Gustav's abiding sorrow, self-loathing, and a kind of world-weary bitterness. He's a tough and uncompromising figure, there's no doubt about it, but, over time, Skarsgård unspools the legend and extracts the fragile man within.
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