An intimate exploration of family, memories, and the reconciliatory power of art.

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” wrote Tolstoy in Anna Karenina, and it still holds true in movies like Sentimental Value. We don’t really know what broke the Borg family apart, we pick up when adult sisters Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) have a memorial for their recently deceased mother in their longstanding family home in Norway. Their father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgard), still the owner of the home, returns from Sweden where he’s a successful film director to pay his respects. Gustav has another motive though – he wants Nora, an accomplished theater actress, to read and star in, his latest film.

Sentimental Value uses the home as an indictment of general trauma, tracking the pain of the original owners (Gustav’s parents), through his immediate family, and now his daughters and grandson (Agnes’ boy). It’s a slow, meditative piece, that doesn’t mire itself with explanation so much as showing the emotion, often unexpressed, behind the characters actions. Elle Fanning plays an American icon in Gustav’s orbit who helps his movie get finances after Nora refuses to work for her father.

I found the movie messy in all the right ways, the way it reveals new truths about characters through seemingly inconsequential dialogue, the way it takes on the Netflix machine and the state of filmmaking in this day and age, and the house as metaphor motif that never feels heavy handed or didactic. Reinsve, Skarsgard and Lilleaas are all amazing in very different ways. Fanning provides a welcome balance with her thoughtful but aimless actress. It’s a weighty movie that never feels heavy.

Jonathan’s grade – A