sentimental value

Renate Reinsve is the new face of Scandinavia: depression with a smile. Standing 5 feet 10 with open, friendly features, the Norwegian talent has a grin that makes her appear at once like an endearing everywoman and a large, unpredictable child. Reinsve zoomed to international acclaim with her Cannes-winning performance in Joachim Trier’s 2021 “The Worst Person in the World,” a dramedy tailor-made to her lanky, likable style of self-loathing. Now, Trier has written his muse another showcase, “Sentimental Value,” where Reinsve plays an emotionally avoidant theater actor who bounces along in pretty much the same bittersweet key.

“Sentimental Value” gets misty about a few things — families, filmmaking, real estate — all while circling a handsome Oslo house where the Borg clan has lived for four generations. It’s a dream home with red trim on the window frames and pink roses in the yard. Yet, sisters Nora (Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) aren’t fighting to keep it, perhaps due to memories of their parents’ hostile divorce or maybe because they don’t want to deal with their estranged father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård, wonderful), who grew up there himself and still owns the place, even though he’s moved to Sweden.

Trier opens the film with a symbolically laden camera pan across Oslo that ends on a cemetery. He wants to make sure we understand that while Norway looks idyllic to outsiders jealous that all four Scandinavian countries rank among the globe’s happiest, it can still be as gloomy as during the era of Henrik Ibsen.

More impressively, Trier shifts to a fabulous, time-bending historical montage of the house itself over the century-plus it’s belonged to the Borgs. There’s a crack in it that seems to represent the fissures in the family, the flaws in their facade. Over these images, Reinsve’s Nora recites a 6th-grade school essay she wrote about her deep identification with her childhood home. Having grown up to become terrified of intimacy, today she’s more like a detached garage.

Nora and Agnes were young when their father, a modestly well-regarded art-house filmmaker, decamped to a different country. At a retrospective of his work, Gustav refers to his crew as his “family,” which would irritate his kids if they’d bothered to attend. Agnes, a former child actor, might note that she, too, deserves some credit. Played in her youth by the compelling Ida Atlanta Kyllingmark Giertsen, Agnes was fantastic in the final shot of Gustav’s masterpiece and Trier takes a teasingly long time to suggest why she retired from the business decades ago, while her older sister keeps hammering at it.

Gustav hasn’t made a picture in 15 years. He’s in that liminal state of renown that I’m guessing Trier has encountered many times: a faded director who’s burned through his money and clout, but still keeps a tuxedo just in case he makes it back to Cannes. Like Reinsve’s Nora, Gustav acts younger than his age and is at his most charming in small doses, particularly with strangers. Trier and his longtime co-writer Eskil Vogt have made him a tad delusional, someone who wouldn’t instantly recognize his graying reflection in a mirror. Sitting down at a cafe with Nora, Gustav jokes that the waitress thinks that they’re a couple on a date. (She almost certainly doesn’t.)

But the tension between Gustav and Nora is real, if blurry. He’s invited her to coffee not as father and daughter, but as a has-been angling to cast Nora as the lead of his next film, which he claims he’s written for her. His script climaxes with a nod to the day his own mother, Karin (Vilde Søyland), died by suicide in their house back when he was just a towheaded boy of 7. Furthering the sickly mojo, Gustav wants to stage his version of the hanging in the very room where it happened.

His awkward pitch is a terrific scene. Gustav and Nora are stiff with each other, both anxious to prove they don’t need the other’s help. But Trier suggests, somewhat mystically, that Gustav has an insight into his daughter’s gloom that making the movie will help them understand. Both would rather express themselves through art than confess how they feel.

When Gustav offers his daughter career advice, it comes off like an insult. She’s miffed when her dad claims his small indie would be her big break. Doesn’t he know she’d be doing him the favor? She’s the lead of Oslo’s National Theatre with enough of a social media following to get the film financed. (With 10 production companies listed in the credits of this very film, Trier himself could probably calculate Nora’s worth to the krone.)

But Gustav also has a lucky encounter with a dewy Hollywood starlet named Rachel (Elle Fanning) who sees him as an old-world bulldog who can give her resume some class. Frustrated by her coterie of assistants glued to their cellphones, Rachel gazes at him with the glowy admiration he can’t get from his own girls. Their dynamic proves to be just as complex as if they were blood-related. If Rachel makes his film, she’ll become a combo platter of his mother, his daughter, his protégée and his cash cow. Nora merely merits the financing for a low-budget Euro drama; Rachel can make it a major Netflix production (something “Sentimental Value” most adamantly is not).

It takes money to make a movie. Trier’s itchiness to get into that unsentimental fact isn’t fully scratched. He seems very aware that the audience for his kind of niche hit wants to sniffle at delicate emotions. When Gustav’s longtime producer Michael (Jesper Christensen) advises him to keep making films “his way” — as in antiquated — or when Gustav takes a swipe at Nora’s career as “old plays for old people,” the frustration in those lines, those doubts whether to stay the course or chase modernity, makes you curious if Trier himself is feeling a bit hemmed in.

There’s a crack running through “Sentimental Value” too. A third of it wants to be a feisty industry satire, but the rest believes there’s prestige value in tugging on the heartstrings. The title seems to be as much about that as anything.

I’ve got no evidence for Trier’s restlessness other than an observation that “Sentimental Value” is most vibrant when the dialogue is snide and the visuals are snappy. There’s a stunning image of Gustav, Nora and Agnes’ faces melting together that doesn’t match a single other frame of the movie, but I’m awful glad cinematographer Kasper Tuxen Andersen got it in there.

The film never quite settles on a theme, shifting from the relationship between Nora and Agnes, Nora and Gustav, and Gustav and Rachel like a gambler spreading their bets, hoping one of those moments will earn a tear. Nora herself gets lost in the shuffle. Is she jealous of her father’s attention to Rachel? Does she care about her married lover who pops up to expose her issues? Does she even like acting?

Reinsve’s skyrocketing career is Trier’s most successful wager and he gives her enough crying scenes to earn an Oscar nomination. Skarsgård is certainly getting one too. But Fanning delivers the best performance in the film. She’s not only hiding depression under a smile, she’s layering Rachel’s megawatt charisma under her eagerness to please, allowing her insecurity at being Gustav’s second pick to poke through in rehearsals where she’s almost — but not quite — up to the task.

Rachel could have been some Hollywood cliché, but Fanning keeps us rooting for this golden girl who hopes she’ll be taken seriously by playing a Nordic depressive. Eventually, she slaps on a silly Norwegian accent in desperation and wills herself to cry in character. And when she does, Fanning has calibrated her sobs to have a hint of hamminess. It’s a marvelous detail that makes this whole type of movie look a little forced.

Norway’s “Sentimental Value” looks poised to be this year’s international feature that breaks through across multiple categories (think “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “Anatomy of a Fall,” “Emilia Pérez” and others): the non-English language movie that earns academy recognition for its acting, script and direction.

Anne Thompson handicaps the race so far thus: Noting that several countries still haven’t chosen their submissions, “Cannes prizewinners have an increased profile with the international committee, including Norway’s ‘Sentimental Value’ and Brazil’s ‘Secret Agent.’ ”

But several other official submissions have our panel over the moon.

“I’ll call it right now,” declares Glenn Whipp: “The thrilling ‘Sirât,’ from Spanish filmmaker Oliver Laxe, is going to be named best picture by either the Los Angeles or New York film critics … then it’ll be off to the races for this film, a ‘Sorcerer’ for the 21st century.”

Robert Daniels’ description of “The Voice of Hind Rajab” is harrowing: “The real-life story of a 6-year-old Palestinian girl whose final hours trapped in a car under intense fire from an IDF tank were spent pleading to be saved … a candid dramatization of her emergency phone calls.”

1. “Sentimental Value” (Norway)
2. “It Was Just an Accident” (France)
3. “The Secret Agent” (Brazil)
4. “No Other Choice” (South Korea)
5. “Sirât” (Spain)
6. “The Voice of Hind Rajab” (Tunisia)
T7. “Calle Málaga” (Morocco)
T7. “The President’s Cake” (Iraq)
T7. “A Useful Ghost” (Thailand)

RogerEbert.com

Robert Daniels

1. “The Voice of Hind Rajab” (Tunisia)
2. “It Was Just an Accident” (France)
3. “Calle Málaga” (Morocco)
4. “Sentimental Value” (Norway)
5. “No Other Choice” (South Korea)

“Venice’s harrowing grand jury prize winner, Tunisia’s ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab,’ has already built early momentum. The film tells the real-life story of Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl whose final hours trapped in a car under intense fire from an IDF tank were spent pleading to be saved. A distressing docufiction, the film is a candid dramatization of her emergency phone calls.”

Turner Classic Movies

Dave Karger

1. “Sentimental Value” (Norway)
2. “It Was Just an Accident” (France)
3. “The Secret Agent” (Brazil)
4. “No Other Choice” (South Korea)
5. “Left-Handed Girl” (Taiwan)

“Three films that are also overall contenders this year stand to dominate this race: Norway’s ‘Sentimental Value,’ Brazil’s ‘The Secret Agent’ and France’s ‘It Was Just an Accident.’ The bigger question will be which films are able to snag the final two slots.”

Los Angeles Times

Amy Nicholson

1. “The Secret Agent” (Brazil)
2. “Sentimental Value” (Norway)
3. “A Useful Ghost” (Thailand)
4. “2000 Meters to Andriivka” (Ukraine)
5. “It Was Just an Accident” (France)

“Can Brazil get back-to-back wins for international feature? Possivelmente! ‘The Secret Agent,’ another political thriller set during the dictatorship, was one of the buzziest movies at Cannes, where it scooped up best actor for star Wagner Moura and best director for Kleber Mendonça Filho (of the weirdo western ‘Bacarau’).”

IndieWire

Anne Thompson

1. “Sentimental Value” (Norway)
2. “The Secret Agent” (Brazil)
3. “The President’s Cake” (Iraq)
4. “No Other Choice” (South Korea)
5. “Left-Handed Girl” (Taiwan)

“It’s too early, as [several countries] haven’t submitted yet. But Cannes prizewinners have an increased profile with the international committee, including Norway’s ‘Sentimental Value’ and Brazil’s ‘Secret Agent.’ ”

Tribune News Service

Katie Walsh

1. “It Was Just an Accident” (France)
2. “Sentimental Value” (Norway)
3. “The Secret Agent”
4. “Sirât” (Spain)
5. “No Other Choice” (South Korea)

“Based on Cannes, I think ‘It Was Just an Accident’ (France), ‘The Secret Agent’ (Brazil), ‘Sirât’ (Spain) and ‘Sentimental Value’ (Norway) could be considered as good as nominated. But who will emerge triumphant in the fifth spot?”

Los Angeles Times

Glenn Whipp

1. “Sirât” (Spain)
2. “Sentimental Value” (Norway)
3. “It Was Just an Accident” (France)
4. “No Other Choice” (South Korea)
5. “The Secret Agent” (Brazil)

“I’ll call it right now. The thrilling ‘Sirât,’ from Spanish filmmaker Oliver Laxe, is going to be named best picture by either the Los Angeles or New York film critics. Who knows? Maybe both. And then it’ll be off to the races for this film, a ‘Sorcerer’ for the 21st century.”

Marking an extraordinary reversal of fortune, including stints in prison and house arrest during years of clandestine work when he was forbidden by authorities from directing, Iran’s Jafar Panahi triumphed at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, winning the event’s top award, the Palme d’Or, for “It Was Just an Accident.”

Appearing to bask in the vindication, Panahi clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back seated in sunglasses, savoring the moment while those around him stood in an ovation.

“It Was Just an Accident,” a tense drama of retribution about a torturer’s abduction by his victims, will be released in 2025 on an as-yet-unannounced date by Neon, the distributor that can now claim an unprecedented six-Palme winning streak, after 2019’s “Parasite,” 2021’s “Titane,” 2022’s “Triangle of Sadness,” 2023’s “Anatomy of a Fall” and 2024’s “Anora” all prevailed. (There was no festival held in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.)

Through a translator, Panahi accepted his award humbly and spoke to the universal impulse to make art. “We don’t know why we do it,” he said. “It’s something I watch my small children do. They sing and dance before they can speak. But it’s another language. It could be a language of unification.”

This year’s Cannes jury was chaired by the veteran French star Juliette Binoche, who deliberated with a group sourced from several countries and disciplines. Jury members included the American actors Halle Berry and Jeremy Strong, India’s Payal Kapadia (director of “All We Imagine as Light”) and Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo.

Cannes’ runner-up award, the Grand Prix, went to “Sentimental Value,” a domestic drama about a family of artists directed by Norway’s Joachim Trier, who broke through in 2021 with “The Worst Person in the World,” which earned two Oscar nominations.

The festival’s Jury Prize — essentially third place — was shared by two movies: Oliver Laxe’s “Sirât” and Mascha Schilinski’s “Sound of Falling.” Ties are not unusual in this category; they’ve occurred as recently as 2022 and as far back as 1957, when Cannes honored both Ingmar Berman’s “The Seventh Seal” and Andrzej Wajda’s “Kanał.”

Taking both the directing prize and the award for best actor was Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent,” a Brazilian crime thriller set in 1977 starring Wagner Maura (“Civil War”). In the hotly contested category of best actress, where on-the-ground predictions varied between Jennifer Lawrence (“Die, My Love), Elle Fanning (“Sentimental Value”) and Zoey Deutch (“Nouvelle Vague”), Nadia Melliti pulled off an upset for her turn in “The Little Sister,” about a French Algerian teen living in Paris and coming out to her Muslim family.