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There are a lot of movies about absentee dads who reappear in their kids' lives.
The new movie, Sentimental Value, is one of the great ones.
It stars Stellan Skarsgård as a filmmaker attempting to reconnect with his estranged daughters.
And it proves that at the very least, the tension between art and parenthood is complicated.
I'm Ayesha Harris.
Today we're talking about Sentimental Value, Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
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Joining me today is my co-host, Stephen Thompson.
Hello, Stephen.
Hello, Aisha.
Also with us is Vulture TV critic Roxana Haddadi.
Welcome back, Roxana.
Hey, thank you so much for having me.
Lovely to have you here.
Sentimental Value stars Stellan Skarsgård as Gustav Borg, a renowned filmmaker preparing his next feature, A Personal Passion Project.
He offers a lead role to his estranged daughter Nora, an actress played by Renata Reinsvett, but she turns him down.
Still, his re-entrance into Nora's life opens the door for possible reconciliation with her, as well as his other daughter Agnes, played by Inga Yves' daughter Lilios.
Elle Fanning also stars as Rachel, an American actress whom Gustav cast in the part Nora rejected.
It's directed by Joachim Trier, who previously worked with Reinsvet on The Worst Person in the World.
Sentimental Value is in theaters now.
Stephen, I'm going to start with you.
You are a resident sentimental critic here.
Resident sentimentalist.
Yes, yes.
And so I am so curious.
How are we feeling about this film?
Well, you know, I think Aisha you recommended as soon as you saw this movie.
You were like Stephen, you need to see this.
You're going to sob all over the place.
And, you know, that is a safe assumption in general, really when recommending any movie.
I really liked this film.
I really admired this film.
I love the performances in this film.
I think this is basically, across the board, a wonderfully acted film.
I didn't necessarily sob all over the place.
I mostly sat there kind of vibing with it and appreciating it.
This film has a lot to say about kind of generational trauma.
There are a lot of kind of cross-generational interactions that are kind of freighted.
There's this central metaphor about this house.
You know where this family kind of grew up and how it is figuratively and literally a broken home.
It has a crack running up the foundation, up the wall.
And you're like, that is a tidy metaphor.
So I wasn't necessarily always 100% knocked out by it.
But I think these performances are... are just marvelous.
I loved Renata Reinsva in The Worst Person in the World.
I thought she was magnificent in that.
I'm always interested in whatever she does.
The fact that she's, you know, working with the same director.
I'm like man.
These two can just keep making movies together.
But for me, the revelation was Inga Ibsdottir Lilaos as Agnes.
It's such a low-key performance and it feels you know she's surrounded by these kind of decorated actors and you know she is a decorated actor, just not super well-known here.
To me, she just jumped off the screen.
And that is such a contained and powerful performance.
Yeah.
There's a very lovely moment towards the end of the film.
That happens between her character and Nora.
And that sort of sister dynamic plays out so interestingly because she herself has not pursued the acting career, even though, you know, They both grew up with their father being famous.
And so like that's such an interesting way to see these two different people who have shared trauma and shared a shared relationship.
And you're so right.
That's such a great performance.
Roxanna, how are we feeling about sentimental value?
I am very pro sentimental.
I mean, look, like you know all my preferences, right?
My preferences are like Stellan being Stellan.
Like I love when he sort of plays this like very defensive in his bad decisions kind of figure.
Like I think that's great.
I'm coded to love that now forever because of Andor.
So I really loved him here as someone who has committed himself fully to to art.
And he's like, yeah, my family was second.
Like it had to be second because I had to make art.
And so I think that the movie does a really good job getting into that ideology and just sort of spending time with what it is to be a filmmaker.
What kind of conversations do you have with actors?
How do you cast people?
How do you make them into the characters they're trying to perform?
I really loved that aspect of it.
The family stuff is like very weighted and yes, it has this like house metaphor that keeps coming yes, but i i really enjoyed the sort of like how do you make a movie, especially when the movie is like plumbing your inner life right, like what is off limits, what is not off limits.
And there are all these moments where stellan's character says like well, this isn't about me.
And you sort of have to laugh because, like You're like yeah right, buddy.
Buddy.
The entire movie is your life story and you're drawing your daughters into it, right?
So it did not make me super emotional so much as it felt very, very satisfying to spend time with this script and with these characters, and so i just yes, i hate to say like the vibes, but the vibe of it in terms of like diving into actual creative pursuit, i think is what i really really liked and responded to.
Yeah, i also think this movie is a little bit of a slow burn where it takes a little bit of time for some of the Yeah, yeah.
But looking back on it and kind of thinking about the film in hindsight, she's there because he relates to actors better than he relates to his kids.
100%.
Yes.
So he wants his kids to be actors so that he can connect to them.
Yes.
And I think that's a really interesting facet of this film, that it's more than just about family.
It's also about filmmakers.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For me, Elle Fanning was actually one of my favorite parts of this film, if not that entire dynamic.
She's quietly becoming one of those actresses where I see her in something and I'm like oh, I'm very happier here.
She's often not in the conversation with the women in her sort of cohort.
You know your Jennifer Lawrence is like, but she should be.
Because I think especially here, while at first, as you said Stephen, it's not clear why she's there,
There is this whole subplot of her trying to be molded by Gustav.
And it is very vertigo.
It is very like, I want you to dye your hair.
I want you to do these things.
And she's going along because she's like I have this opportunity to work with this brilliant artist and this could be great.
And there's a way that this could have been played.
She's the American actress, the Hollywood actress, who just kind of wants to like, put this under her belt and maybe get an Oscar.
Like there's a way this could have felt like a very queasy role, but it's very clear she wants to do good work.
But what I loved about that dynamic is that while that's happening and he's dealing with his not being a good father, she is trying to figure out like where do I fit in?
And maybe realizing maybe this isn't right for me.
There's just something about that and seeing that play out in a way that it's often really hard to get filmmaking and rehearsing right to like on film, like it's hard to make it seem like, feel like the natural process of that, and I think what Joakim Trier is able to do here is really get into the nitty gritty about what it's like to work one-on-one with someone, especially when you want them to be something or like want to try and work, like create a character, and they're not sure how to do it and you're not sure what you want either.
And I loved that.
We cover a lot of movies about the process of making art, and making art is a thing that is really hard to capture on film.
And often you wind up shorthanding it with, like the lone genius sitting at a writing table, scribbling out and throwing into the wastebasket, and like that's supposed to represent what the artistic process is all about.
But so often I mean the artistic process, often generally I say this all the time is not the work of a lone genius.
It's the product of collaboration.
And how do you capture the kind of thorny conversational frustrated, kind of tightly wound process that results in great art?
And this film, I think, really does get at it, while also capturing how hard that can be to translate into the collaboration necessary to have a happy and healthy family.
I also think the thing that I really liked and it's very much part of that is that there's sort of this question of like who owns your personal experience, especially when your personal experience like, overlaps with other people.
And like we get into this like a lot with just like autobiographical art in general like, is it your place to speak to things that you experienced when they involve other people, and those other people don't want you to speak to them, and so there's this whole undercurrent there as well, and there's this like wonderful scene where the characters of Nora and Rachel meet.
Why didn't you want to do the role?
I can't work with him, why we can't really talk, but he wanted you to do it.
Yeah, Yeah.
And they have this like sort of existential discussion, right?
About like, what is that relationship like?
And I just think all of that was really fascinating.
The other thing that I will say that I really enjoyed is there is sort of this, like in Gustav's character, this sort of like hierarchy of art that I actually really liked.
Like he insults television, which of course a film director would do.
And he sort of, he sort of like discredits the fact that Nora has become like a very celebrated stage actor.
Right.
Like he doesn't want any part of the stage.
Yeah.
Which is weird.
You would think there would be a little bit more reverence for the stage.
I mean, stage purism is such a thing.
Yeah, that's true.
You know we're talking a lot about the emotional resonance and the trauma and all that stuff is 100 there.
But I also liked these moments when the characters can just be sort of shady about different art forms.
Yeah.
Yes, yes.
It speaks to the quality of both the script and these performances that these feel like fully richly thought out and drawn characters.
Yeah, absolutely.
I did want to kind of ask about like before we got on mic Roxanna, you and I were chatting about similarities between this and another film that will be out this fall season.
J. Kelly, the Noah Baumbach film starring George Clooney.
Very, very similar.
Very similar.
In plots.
Yeah.
George Clooney is playing instead of a director.
He's a big movie star, basically kind of a himself, but not
Yeah, yeah.
And he's trying to reconnect with his daughters and figure out, you know, where did I go wrong?
Why was I absent?
So hear me out for a second.
Remember in the 90s I guess 80s and 90s where there was a slew of movies where people The dads who were workaholics were getting.
It was like you had to go through a whole rigmarole.
Or it's like, oh, you're not there for your kids.
And then at the end of the movie, they realize... you know, oh, well, I need to be a better father.
Work is everything.
That's when you hurl your cell phone into the river.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, this feels like, you know, the elevated version of that.
Sure.
Instead of, you know, like Tim Allen or whatever.
It's Stellan Skarsgård.
Robin Williams, Jim Carrey.
We're talking about Hook.
Can we just say that we're talking about Hook?
Like, that's fine.
Sure.
We're talking about Hook.
I'm just curious because, like having seen both of these movies, just like, what is it about this sort of exercise, especially when you're talking about fathers and not mothers?
Yeah.
Is there anything you want to say about that?
Well, I think we're generally just sort of living in like a heavily fathers of daughters time.
Like that just seems to be like so much of the content that we get.
I mean, The Last of Us is fathers of daughters.
Like both of these movies are fathers of daughters.
And I think part of that, of course, is that, like we still live in a society that is very much movie, directors are fathers of.
That's true.
You know, like we just get their crises because that's who's making art.
I will say that I do think that yes, these movies are sort of like interesting counterpoints to each other.
I would say I think that for me, sentimental value felt more about filmmaking and art. memory and i think j kelly felt more about like the celebrity machine less to me about the daughter dynamic i think it felt more like what is it like to be george clooney and that's that's sort of fun to explore yeah but i i think it just felt more about like star making than it felt about like art making and i can't speak to j kelly i haven't seen it yet but I do think one thing this film gets right in comparison to so many other films about dads and daughters is...
This movie cares very deeply about the interior lives of the daughters.
Yes.
And does right by the interior lives of the daughters.
And part of that is a testament to the performances, but part of that is the movie actually cares about them.
And the dad is a little bit more of an ephemeral, mercurial presence.
Like, he's the one you don't necessarily know everything that makes that guy tick.
Right.
I think the film is ultimately more interested in the daughters.
Yeah.
To its credit.
Absolutely.
I think we spend almost as much time with them.
If not more.
Yeah, if not more.
And I think for me, one of my biggest issues Well, my only issue with this film sentimental value really is the ending.
I did feel as though there was some emotional...
There are some emotional beats that somehow were skipped, even though this is a very emotional movie and there's so much attention to detail.
It's like the last few minutes, I did feel a little bit let down by how kind of tidy it all felt.
Not perfect, but just tidy.
That's exactly the right word.
It doesn't undermine, it doesn't ruin the rest of the experience of the film for me, but it does kind of give me like I kind of wish there was a different decision made there.
I sort of felt like the ending was... inevitable.
Like.
I don't know how else you would end this movie, given sort of like the themes that it is talking about in terms of like, artistic expression and like is it most important to do?
Art that challenges you or just art that you're good at?
And I think that those are like very different things in this film.
I can see your point that I feel like maybe there's some like squishiness in terms of how we get there.
But I always sort of thought we would get there.
So I was okay with it by the end.
Yeah.
I think there are ways they could have actually biffed the ending.
And I appreciated that they didn't.
That's true.
It does feel a little tidy in a film that is willing to go so much deeper in other ways.
I think that's maybe why the tidiness stands out.
Joachim Trier has talked about how he sees this as sort of like an exercising of his own anxieties about being a father.
Right, i don't want to psychoanalyze him here, but like i do wonder if that maybe is part of why he made that decision with the ending is like he's still working through things, right?
I also think that it also speaks to the fact that like this is why you cast stellan Right.
Like, Stellan has... Yes.
I'm going to make this joke, which is not true, but Stellan has, like, a million children.
They're all in acting.
Right?
Like, I think that there is also sort of... Family scars guard.
Yeah.
There's also this sort of interesting meta layer to having Stellan, who mostly has sons who are actors, playing this character, who has daughters who are
Well, yeah.
I think we all really dug this and think people should absolutely see this film.
Yes.
It is a very moving movie.
It didn't make us all cry, but I think it'll at least make you sniffle, maybe.
I mean, I cried a little.
Oh.
You can feel things and not cry, you know?
This is true.
Well, you say so.
I cry a lot.
A lot of tears.
Well, tell us what you think about Sentimental Value when you've had a chance to check it out.
Find us on Facebook at facebookcom slash pchh.
And on Letterboxd at letterboxdcom slash nprpopculture.
We'll have a link to that in our episode description.
That brings us to the end of our show.
Roxana Haddadi, Stephen Thompson, thanks so much for being here.
Thank you, guys.
Thank you.
This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Carly Rubin and Mike Katziff and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy.
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I'm Aisha Harris, and we'll see you all next time.
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