Sentimental Value: when cinema shouts what words keep silent

Directed by Norwegian director Joachim Trier and starring Renate Reinseve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleas, Stellan Skarsgard, and Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value seeks to build a case for cinema as redemption for the reconstruction of broken bonds.

With the imposing backdrop of an adorable red house, the voiceover introduces us to the childhood of Nora and Agnes, two sisters who must grow up with the divorce of their parents and the absence of their father weighing on them.

The red house, inherited from generation to generation by the Borg family, serves as a narrative core of the story while acting as a privileged witness to the joys and sorrows of its inhabitants.

To rebuild his relationship with his daughters, Gustavo Borg, a prominent film director, proposes that his eldest daughter Nora play the leading role in his next movie. She refuses, arguing that the years of absence and separation have created an abyss between them.

In the context of a Film Festival, Gustav meets Rachel Kemp, a famous American actress who is impressed by Borg's retrospective. He offers her the leading role in the film, a heartbreaking story based on his mother’s suicide when he was a child.

Karin, Gustav's mother, had actively participated in the Resistance during the Nazi occupation of Norway during World War II. Agnes, her granddaughter and Nora's sister, goes to the archives to search for information about her grandmother. While reading her dossier, she discovers the tortures that she suffered while detained.

At this moment, a thread is forged between Karin, her agony, and the suffering of her granddaughters in the present. This thread allows them to add pieces to the missing puzzle in their father's life and to forgive him.

This film, filled with a great script and subtle but dazzling performances, allows us to reflect on the sentimental value of objects, people, moments, and memories that shape our identity. The concept of cinema as the medium that unites and separates the Borg family elevates the reparative role of art in a world of broken bonds.