TORONTO — Much like cross-country skiing through the fjord, the Norwegian dramedy “Sentimental Value,” which played the Toronto International Film Festival Thursday night, is rewarding for some and long and slow for most. Chilly, for all.
movie review
SENTIMENTAL VALUE
Running time: 135 minutes. In theaters Nov. 7.
Perhaps its rockin’ reception at Cannes in the spring had me ready to fall head over heels for director Joachim Trier’s latest. So, I’m disappointed to have fallen lids over eyes instead.
Many hits at the French fest have, in recent years, deservedly made the leap from the IFC Center and cinephile Reddit to the mainstream: “Parasite,” “Anora,” “Triangle of Sadness” and “Anatomy of a Fall,” among them.
All of those stellar movies are hypnotizing and intriguing. Surprising, too. Not “Sentimental Value.” Trier’s frayed, cultured family is subtle, pretty and old hat. The skis never stray far from a very obvious path.
The plays of Anton Chekhov are brought up quite a bit by Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt’s upper-middle-class characters.
And these Norwegians definitely are derivative of Chekhovian folks like Arkadina, Nina, Konstantin, Vanya and Sonya, only far less passionate and funny. And, as Chekhov was Russian, that’s saying a lot.
Stellan Skarsgård plays Gustav, a venerable and slightly creepy film director who hasn’t made a movie in a long time and left his wife and kids years earlier.
His daughter Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) starred in one of his best features when she was a little girl, but ultimately opted for a domestic life as a wife and mother. Running away from her past, perhaps.
Her sister Nora (Renate Reinsve) is an untethered actress who Gustav desperately wants to star in his long-awaited new film. But she turns him down. The relationships are all on the fritz with restrained sparks. Steel and flint, not fireworks.
The family owns an old house in Oslo that has a lot of history, both agonizing and happy. One joke about a long-passed event in an innocuous room turns out to be a sad half-truth. The abode is also a character, as houses often are.
An American actress named Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) catches a screening of a Gustav classic, and begs to be in his forthcoming creation. That sets off some soul searching.
Visually, Trier’s film is catalogue-esque; autumnal and glossy. A series of wedding locales from Martha Stewart Living. A hospital room is more gorgeous than most Fifth Avenue apartments. And if you like staring at leafy trees through big, beautiful windows, run don’t walk.
And the acting from the women is very, very fine. Reinsve, as Nora, has easy gravitas and doesn’t overdo it on her character’s actorly eccentricities. When, out of nerves, she demands her male co-star to slap her in the face offstage, it’s a totally plausible moment. The viewer likes her, even if you can’t quite put your finger on why.
The same is true of Lilleaas and her Agnes’ maternal protectiveness and fatigue. As her son Erik, Øyvind Hesjedal Loven is so real it’s like Trier plopped a camera in a playground and pressed record, which would be weird.
Skarsgård, however, I found stilted. He’s a charming jerk, and there’s not much more to him than that. Gustav’s obliviousness and disinterest occasionally came off not as the fictional director’s, but Skarsgård’s.
However well acted, or not, it’s hard to see yourself in any of these fiscally unencumbered, cagey artists.
Trier’s movie, which is an Oscar contender for some reason, isn’t bad. I just wanted it to get under my skin, and it stubbornly resisted doing so for more than two hours.
He’s the sort of director about which people say, “He paints a picture.” This is true. And like a picture, “Sentimental Value” does not move.
