Norway's Oscar winner 'Sentimental Value': a failing father seeks redemption

Arthouse filmmaker Gustav Borg, played expertly by Sweden's Stellan Skarsgard, turns up out of the blue at his ex-wife's funeral, re-entering his daughters' lives years after abandoning them, and offers the eldest -- troubled actress Nora (Renate Reinsve) -- the lead in his next movie.

What follows is a painful dissection of past traumas and unspoken tensions between a failing father -- no longer wanted yet trying to redeem himself with a new movie script -- and his two very different yet inextricably close daughters.

In a sign of the gulf separating them, Borg writes a suicide scene for Nora, unaware that his daughter -- whose success as a stage actress barely conceals her inner demons -- once tried to end her own life.

In a reversal of roles, younger sister Agnes, played by Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, has grown into the family's rock.

"It sounds cheesy, but I wept a lot making this film because I was so moved by the actors," director Joachim Trier told AFP last year.

"The actors are my friends. I know that they were being halfway a character and halfway themselves," said Trier, who penned the script with his screenwriting partner Eskil Vogt.

Critics broadly hailed the actors' performances.

Both Skarsgard and Lilleaas were nominated for best actor/actress in a supporting role, while Reinsve -- who won the best actress award at Cannes in 2021 for Trier's previous film "The Worst Person in the World" -- was nominated for best actress.

American actress Elle Fanning was also nominated in the best supporting actress category, playing a Hollywood starlet who comes to work on Borg's film after Nora rejects the role written for her.
Emotional battles
The beautiful old Scandinavian-style wooden home in Oslo where the film was shot is itself a character in the story, bearing the emotional weight of several generations in its walls.

It is where Borg's mother hung herself when he was a young child, the home he fled after his divorce, and finally the location where he plans to set his new film after his ex-wife's death.

It is also the scene of wrought emotional battles between him and his daughters.

"The house is a witness of the unspoken," Trier told Script Magazine.

At the movie's premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, it received an extraordinary 19-minute standing ovation, winning the Grand Prix second prize.

In addition to its nine Academy Award nominations, the film was also nominated for eight Golden Globes -- though only Skarsgard walked away with a prize -- and eight BAFTAs, winning for Best Film Not in the English Language.

"I'd seen his films, and I felt, 'When is he going to call me?'" Skarsgard told a press conference in Cannes last year.

"I wanted to work with him, because I felt that he can get something out of me that maybe someone else can't."

The 74-yar-old Skarsgard, who has eight children, also noted that he was well-suited for the role.

"When you're an older man who is in the film business, and you have a lot of kids, this is perfect for you," he said.

Trier has said the movie's filmmaker father is a mash-up of great auteurs such as Ingmar Bergman, Krzysztof Kieslowski and John Cassavetes.

Despite its international success, Trier's sixth feature film was not a hit with all Norwegian critics.

Some saw it as too slick, too self-absorbed because of its film-world plot, and too aesthetic to be relatable to average filmgoers.

Nonetheless, even before Hollywood had its say, "Sentimental Value" broke every box office record for a Norwegian film.