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7 days ago
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Norwegian Director Joachim Trier Talks ‘Sentimental Value': ‘People That Deny Emotions Make Terrible Choices'
'Brat' summer is dead — long live 'Joachim Trier Summer,' as proclaimed by Elle Fanning, and her playful T-shirt, at Cannes. 'After three years of hard work, I'd love to have a three-year-long summer,' laughs the Danish-born Norwegian director after the premiere of 'Sentimental Value.' More from Variety 'Aisha Can't Fly Away' Review: Buliana Simon Stuns in Morad Mostafa's Intriguing if Uneven Immigrant Tale 'Resurrection' Review: Bi Gan's Extravagant Act of Surrender to the Seductions of a Century of Cinema 'The Party's Over' Review: South of France-Set Satire Follows an Escalating Class Conflict Starring Renate Reinsve — reuniting with Trier after the hit 'The Worst Person in the World' — Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Fanning, it premiered to rave reviews. But unlike some other Palme d'Or contenders, it touched the audience as well. 'I'm grateful and a bit exhausted, but most of all relieved. I had a feeling yesterday that people received it well, and I was in a room with a lot of love. It's an emotional, personal piece of cinema,' he tells Variety. In the film, sisters Nora (Reinsve) and Agnes (Lilleaas) have to say goodbye to their late mother — and hello to their absentee father Gustav, a film director struggling to get new feature off the ground. But he recently wrote a script about his own mom, who killed himself when he was a boy. And wants the newly famous Nora to play the lead. Although he's talking about a fellow director, Trier 'doesn't feel like Gustav,' he says. 'I started writing it from the perspective of the sisters and then I tried to humanize Gustav. He comes from a completely different generation; he's a part of that '80s, '90s cinema. But you're right: maybe I'm exercising my anxieties of what it's like to come to an end of a directorial career?' He adds: 'That's why I like Westerns: so many of them are about the end of an era. That's just the way things go. Many people from that generation are slowly fading away from our industry, and one day it'll be my turn.' Before he wanders away like John Wayne in 'The Searchers,' Trier's happy to talk about 'Sentimental Value' and the main trio who's back at their old house and facing old secrets — including that of Gustav's mother's past. 'The hardest part was to represent the past traumas of the Second World War, which I know from my family. It takes it into a slightly more political or historical perspective than I have in some of my other films. I grew up with a grandfather who was in the resistance and was tremendously traumatized: he was caught and barely survived. It created a climate of survival in the homes of our parents'. And that affected emotional communication.' Trier 'wanted to explore how inherited grief travels through the house and through the family.' Working with regular co-writer Eskil Vogt made it easier to get some distance. 'There's also this notion of humanist cinema. I can't write about antagonists, even though the world is all about that right now. The antagonist and 'the other' as an enemy. It doesn't interest me. I'm interested in understanding the complexity of why people end up hurting and disappointing each other. I'm interested in tenderness. I think it comes from the director's personality as well. I genuinely … like people. I'm an extrovert and I'm curious. And if some find that style too 'emotional,' fuck it. That's who I am.' Gustav's avoiding emotions, which makes things hard for his daughters. But at least he can write a script. 'That's the core of the story: that's all he can do. In the beginning, we think he's an asshole for doing it. We think he's trying to benefit from Nora's fame. I'm generalizing a bit, but Gustav Borg, and other men of his generation, weren't raised with the capacity for that emotional, tender language,' he says. 'I get asked a lot about gender perspectives on characters. I need these characters to be myself as well. They're me and then they are not. I know Renate, so she can come back with some feedback. But why should it be easier to write a man like Gustav, so much older than me, than to write a woman who's closer to my age?' he wonders. 'Me, I was [allowed to cry]. I used to skateboard, and we did talk a lot about emotions, but we were also kind of tough. I broke my arms and legs, and that's not when you cry. There's this kind of shamefulness around it, but people that deny emotions make terrible choices.' A third-generation filmmaker, he's had a camera in his hands all his life. 'It's easier for me than writing or doing anything else.' But while Gustav hires U.S. star (Fanning) to act in his English-language movie, Trier enjoys his own way of working for now. 'When I grew up, everyone was playing music. I was a shitty drummer and got kicked out of the punk band I was in. But I'm a filmmaker now, and I try to have the same band,' he says. 'This industry is so big. I love experimentation, and I love mainstream, but I'd say: Maybe we can do something in between? That's a big question: Can you stay at home and be successful? Right now, I'm experiencing my dream, which was to be a local band that had fans around the world. 'Fans' sounds a bit pretentious, but at least an audience,' he says. 'With this one, it really felt like we were in it for the right reasons. We have Neon in the U.S., and they're doing a great job, but what's Hollywood today, really? I love the fact we have films with Tom Cruise, and I will see 'Mission: Impossible,' but I'd never compromise the kind of creative control I've had from film one. I don't know another system that could offer me this way of working.' He doesn't take it for granted, he admits. 'With every film, I have this little demon at the back of my head, telling me it's the last one. You never feel safe. Making a film means always going through a little bit of a crisis. I remember reading an interview with Philip Roth once, and he said that with every new book, it felt impossible. I found it so comforting.' Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Sentimental Value' Review: Joachim Trier's Resonant Family Drama Treats a Beautiful Old House as the Foundation for Healing
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. 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. Obviously, 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. More from Variety 'A Useful Ghost' Review: A Haunted Vacuum Cleaner Hoovers Up Attention in Pleasingly Particular Ghost Story Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor Make Cannes Sob With Powerful Gay Romance 'The History of Sound,' Which Earns 6-Minute Standing Ovation Cannes Critics' Week Awards Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke's 'A Useful Ghost' 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 passed away, 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 at the outset. He 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 own 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, and 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 proceeds to manipulate 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 on 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. Turns out, the more illuminating dynamic is the one between Nora and her sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas). Gustav's departure all those years ago, coupled with their mother's illness, forced a certain responsibility upon Nora before she was ready to handle it, and now it's Agnes who's the one looking out for Nora. As it turns out, Gustav has pulled this kind of stunt before. Among his artistic principles, first and foremost is that he films with friends, preferring 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's quick to shoot down the idea. But she's the first to recognize how 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. Best of Variety The Best Albums of the Decade
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Sentimental Value' Review: Joachim Trier's Bergmanesque Family Drama Is A Sister Act With Wonderful Renate Reinsve (But Stellan Skarsgård Steals It)
At the opening of Joachim Trier's new film Sentimental Value we meet Nora Borg (Renata Reinsve), who is the epitome of an insecure actor as she attempts to do everything in her power to get out of going on stage — a bag of nervous tics as she runs around trying to quit. This, however, is opening night for the star of the play and the audience is seated. Cut to massive applause at the end of the play. Nora was a hit. All is good. That beginning tells us this role is going to be very different than the one Reinsve took best actress in Cannes for The Worst Person in the World, Trier's beloved 2021 film that also got two Oscar nominations (for International Film and its for its screenplay). In fact she is actually quite different than the opening would have us believe, a quieter, more introspective sibling to her younger sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, a real discovery here) who is a wife and mother of a 9-year-old boy and has really switched places with Nora, now more the protector growing up with a single mother for the two of them. The generational family home is still the center of the universe for them. Their father, renowned film director Gustav Borg (a towering Stellan Skarsgård), abandoned his family, has had little contact and has a career that is now on the decline. To revive it, he chooses an inopportune moment: his ex-wife's funeral service, into which he barges uninvited. His real motive is about to be revealed. More from Deadline Joachim Trier's 'Sentimental Value' Wows Cannes In Premiere, Gets Extraordinary 19-Minute Ovation Cannes Film Festival 2025: Read All Of Deadline's Movie Reviews 'I Only Rest In The Storm' Clip: Portuguese Un Certain Regard Title Delves Into Neo-Colonialism & International NGOs - Cannes Gustav has written an autobiographical script that he believes is his ticket back to glory, and he is here in the family home with a screenplay he hands to Nora, a film he wants to direct the renowned stage actress in essentially as herself. He wrote it for her. But there is no love lost from her side of this estranged father-daughter dynamic, and she turns him down. So what does he do? He hires a big commercial Hollywood star, Rachel Kemp ( Elle Fanning), to take on the part of the daughter (not even thinly disguised as Nora growing up). He had met the star at a film festival featuring a retrospective and tribute to his earlier triumphs and she was looking to work with legends like him instead of in box office blockbusters. She turns up to discuss the role with Gustav. With Kemp and Gustav now on the premises everything is thrown off kilter in the delicate balance of this family still navigating grief for the loss of the mother after a long illness, the wayward return of the bigger-than-life father, and essentially a famous movie star standing in for one sister who wants no part of it. Each of these characters, in this house with a long history, are now trying to chart a proper path for happiness in a difficult situation. Props to Jorgen Stangegye Larsen's superb production design and the just-right cinematography of Kaster Tuxen. We see the relationship of Nora and Agnes take on new dimension with Gustav back in their lives unexpectedly, their mother gone, and everything turned upside down. The screenplay by Trier and longtime writing partner Eskil Vogt manages to traverse all of this family drama with understated quiet moments and undetected tension. There are also revealing flashbacks showing all the main characters at various ages in the house that is the only character that maintains its consistent place in time. This may be the closest Trier has gotten to the master of this kind of human conflict, Ingmar Bergman, whose films would seem to be an influence, or at the very least an inspiration, although the musical choices Trier makes would never get near a Bergman movie. The director seems to be more comfortable now with more characters at the center to play with, a certain freedom than the focus on just one main player as was the case with Reinsve's imperfect Julie in Worst Person. Those expecting a replay of that film should leave those thoughts at the door. This outing shows Trier making every attempt to go deeper below the surface (and with less fun along the way). Watch an advance scene from the film below: The real force of nature in Sentimental Value is Skarsgård and the film comes alive each moment he is on screen as a man who turned his back on his daughters, even his grandson, for the sake of a career. Now that it has ebbed he is trying to cash in on personal experience and his daughter for a comeback. Of course that is one way of looking at it, but for a man who doesn't wear his emotions on his sleeve it could also be a way of reconnecting in a broken relationship, making up the only way he knows how — with art. In some ways it reminds me of Jane Fonda buying the Ernest Thompson play On Golden Pond as a property for her and her emotionally distant father, Henry Fonda, to make a film version, her private goal a chance to find renewal in their own father-daughter relationship. Still you have to ask that by simply 'recasting' his daughter with a big star Gustav may be showing his true selfish self. Trier doesn't put it out there so easily. You have to play this one as it lays. It is up to Agnes to be the adult in the room, not just for her husband and son, but for everyone including her sister who, as we saw in that opening scene, is uncertain of herself and needs some empathy, only now to receive it from a younger sibling who has turned into the wise one who can clearly see things with more clarity. Lilleaas is a revelation in this role, the real find here, as Reinsve is far more understated but nonetheless a welcome screen presence in any role she is handed (witness last year's unhinged Armand). Fanning is just great in a supporting role as the film turns to English language for her scenes, the best being a confrontation with Gustav as she explains her reluctance to take the part after all, a feeling that she may have accidentally stumbled into a family drama that is real life, not on the pages Gustav has written. Sentimental Value is a film that sneaks up on you, more meditative than maybe expected but also one that will not leave your mind so easily. The conclusion also turns out to be one of more satisfying endings I have seen in some time, perfectly pitched and worth the wait for its human truth, and value that stops just short of sentimental. Producers are Maria Exerhovd and Andrea Berentsen. Title: Sentimental ValueFestival: Cannes (Competition)Distributor: NeonDirector: Joachim TrierScreenwriters: Joachim Trier and Eskil VogtCast: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Elle FanningRunning time: 2 hr 15 mins Best of Deadline Broadway's 2024-2025 Season: All Of Deadline's Reviews Sundance Film Festival U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize Winners Through The Years Deadline Studio At Sundance Film Festival Photo Gallery: Dylan O'Brien, Ayo Edebiri, Jennifer Lopez, Lily Gladstone, Benedict Cumberbatch & More
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Joachim Trier's 'Sentimental Value' sends Cannes swooning
CANNES, France (AP) — It took nearly until the end of the festival, but the Cannes Film Festival has its first outright sensation. Joachim Trier's 'Sentimental Value' premiered Wednesday night to the kind of rapturous response that Cannes is fabled for. The film, starring Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård and Elle Fanning, marked the follow-up for Trier of his lauded 2021 film 'The Worst Person in the World.' There's stagecraft that goes into Cannes' famous standing ovations, which makes the timed applause reports an often inaccurate reflections of how movies are received at the festival. But the thunderous ovation for 'Sentimental Value,' at 19 minutes, was, by any account, the most rousing of any film in Cannes by a large margin. 'What's that Buñuel quote? 'I make films for my friends?'' Trier said, addressing the crowd. 'I feel you're all my friends tonight.' Trier's remark, while Fanning wiped away tears, was a poignant reference to 'Sentimental Value.' Reinsve, who starred in 'The Worst Person in the World,' plays the actor daughter of a well regarded filmmaker Gustav (Skarsgård) who has put moviemaking before parenting most of their lives. When he writes a script for her, she immediately refuses. Gustav instead casts a young Hollywood star (Fanning). Much of the film is set around their old family home in Oslo, in which Gustav wants to make his film. As 'Sentimental Value' proceeds, it gently unveils questions of family and home that have as much to do with art making as for fathers and daughters. The debut of 'Sentimental Value' immediately made Trier's film a contender, if not the clear favorite, for Cannes' top award, the Palme d'Or. Should 'Sentimental Value' win on Saturday, when Cannes draws to a close, it would extend the indie distributor Neon's unprecedent streak of Palme d'Or wins. Neon has backed the last five Palme d'Or-winners in Cannes, including last year's winner, the Oscar-winner 'Anora.' This year, it also acquired another film that could be in the mix, Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho's 'The Secret Agent.' Should 'Sentimental Value' win over the jury headed by Juliette Binoche, it would be the first Norwegian film to win the Palme d'Or. Cannes draws to a close Saturday. ___ For more coverage of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, visit:
San Francisco Chronicle
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Joachim Trier's 'Sentimental Value' sends Cannes swooning
CANNES, France (AP) — It took nearly until the end of the festival, but the Cannes Film Festival has its first outright sensation. Joachim Trier's 'Sentimental Value' premiered Wednesday night to the kind of rapturous response that Cannes is fabled for. The film, starring Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård and Elle Fanning, marked the follow-up for Trier of his lauded 2021 film 'The Worst Person in the World.' There's stagecraft that goes into Cannes' famous standing ovations, which makes the timed applause reports an often inaccurate reflections of how movies are received at the festival. But the thunderous ovation for 'Sentimental Value,' at 19 minutes, was, by any account, the most rousing of any film in Cannes by a large margin. 'What's that Buñuel quote? 'I make films for my friends?'' Trier said, addressing the crowd. 'I feel you're all my friends tonight.' Trier's remark, while Fanning wiped away tears, was a poignant reference to 'Sentimental Value.' Reinsve, who starred in 'The Worst Person in the World,' plays the actor daughter of a well regarded filmmaker Gustav (Skarsgård) who has put moviemaking before parenting most of their lives. When he writes a script for her, she immediately refuses. Gustav instead casts a young Hollywood star (Fanning). Much of the film is set around their old family home in Oslo, in which Gustav wants to make his film. As 'Sentimental Value' proceeds, it gently unveils questions of family and home that have as much to do with art making as for fathers and daughters. The debut of 'Sentimental Value' immediately made Trier's film a contender, if not the clear favorite, for Cannes' top award, the Palme d'Or. Should 'Sentimental Value' win on Saturday, when Cannes draws to a close, it would extend the indie distributor Neon's unprecedent streak of Palme d'Or wins. Neon has backed the last five Palme d'Or-winners in Cannes, including last year's winner, the Oscar-winner 'Anora.' This year, it also acquired another film that could be in the mix, Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho's 'The Secret Agent.' Should 'Sentimental Value' win over the jury headed by Juliette Binoche, it would be the first Norwegian film to win the Palme d'Or. Cannes draws to a close Saturday. ___
