Sentimental Value

Gustav Borg was once a celebrated film director. Years ago he left his wife and their two daughters in the old family house in Oslo and moved to Sweden, and he has been an occasional, difficult presence in their lives ever since. Now his ex-wife has died, the daughters are grown up, and Gustav is back, wanting to reclaim the house and to make one last film. Nora, the elder, is a gifted stage actress crippled by stage fright. Agnes, the younger, is a historian with a quiet family life. Gustav wants Nora for the lead in his comeback. She says no. So he casts a young American star instead, and decides to shoot in the house.

Joachim Trier, who wrote it again with Eskil Vogt after The Worst Person in the World, makes a film about families, art and the rooms where both are made. The house itself almost becomes a character, the place where generations of pain have been stored. Renate Reinsve is superb as Nora, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas is quietly devastating as Agnes, and Stellan Skarsgård gives one of the best performances of his career as Gustav, charming, selfish and wounded, a father who can only speak to his children through his work. Elle Fanning is very good as the outsider who slowly understands what she has walked into.

It is a film about what parents pass on without meaning to, and about whether art can repair what life has broken. Funny, painful and full of grace. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes, Skarsgård won the Golden Globe, and it became the first Norwegian film to win the Oscar for Best International Feature. A major work.