In "Sentimental Value," Joachim Trier films family wounds that never heal.

THE WORLD'S OPINION – NOT TO BE MISSED

An image runs through Valeur sentimentale , the sixth feature film by Joachim Trier , winner of the Grand Prix at the last Cannes Film Festival: that of a face scrutinized by the camera, where a tear appears in the corner of the eye that would not fall. A pain that is very present beneath the surface, but held back. This grief that comes from afar seems to connect Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgard), a renowned filmmaker who has not acted for fifteen years, and his two daughters with whom he maintains a relationship as distant as it is complex, Nora (Renate Reinsve), the eldest, and Agnès (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), the youngest. It accompanies the viewer throughout this family story with a strong emotional charge. In a dreamlike sequence, which occurs three-quarters of the way through the film, the faces of the three characters merge, against a black background, in a disturbing play of almost monstrous combinations from which these slightly moist eyes always stand out under the light.

More prosaically, the trio also inherited an old house in Oslo that belonged to Gustav's family and was home to Sissel, his ex-wife, whose death marks the beginning of the story. It was in this large, dark wooden building with red lines, adorned with a garden, that Nora and Agnes grew up. They saw their parents argue and then separate there, they secretly spied on their psychologist mother's sessions and played at running down the grand staircase. It was there, long before that, that Nora and Agnes's great-great-grandfather died, and that their grandmother was born and then died in painful circumstances.

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