Years of suppressed feelings surface when a father asks his daughter to be in his last film.
Captivating and engaging!
Family affairs: what we say and what we don’t. More importantly, how we express what we don’t say. The pauses, the silences, the glances that carry entire conversations within them. And then it goes deeper – how we express what we feel when we don’t even acknowledge those feelings ourselves. Estrangement… not only from the family, but from who we are when left alone with our thoughts.
And then there is film – the art of expression. Of translating what we can or cannot articulate. Of confronting what we can or cannot handle. Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, also written by Eskil Vogt, exists in that fragile, dark, internal space. It is a film about human nature – its strengths and its unavoidable fractures. About the emotions we suppress, store away, and eventually release at the worst possible time. Trier approaches this not with melodrama, but with emotional control. He trusts the audience’s potentially relatable experience, to sit in the discomfort, to read between the lines, to feel what is not explicitly shown.
The performances elevate everything. Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, and Elle Fanning, all nominated for Oscars, as well as the rest of the cast, deliver performances that are never excessive or underplayed and anchor the film’s exploration of identity and disconnection. They are all equally committed, each performance adding another layer to the film’s emotional architecture.
It is no surprise, then, that the film has been recognised across the world – BAFTA, Golden Globes, Oscars, and beyond. Becoming the first Norwegian film to win the Academy Award for Best International Feature is an inevitable achievement. It earns every accolade and arguably deserves even more.
Trier and Vogt, who also gave us the haunting Thelma (2017): https://kaygazpro.com/thelma-2017-drama-fantasy-horror/, one of my earliest reviews that helped shape my own critical voice, return with a deeply introspective work. You can sense a filmmaker who understands not just cinema, but people. Actually, Vogt has written and directed one of my favourite Norwegian horrors, The Innocents (2021): https://kaygazpro.com/the-innocents-2021-drama-horror-mystery/– highly recommended!
In a last note, Sentimental Value does not shout, it does not demand, but most certainly provides an archipelago of food for thought.
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