LE MONDE'S OPINION – MUST-SEE

A single image runs through Sentimental Value, the sixth feature film by Joachim Trier and winner of the Grand Prix at the most recent Cannes Film Festival: a face closely observed by the camera, with a tear at the corner of the eye that never falls. Pain lurks just beneath the surface, yet is held back. This sorrow, rooted deep in the past, appears to link Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgard), a renowned filmmaker who has not made a movie in 15 years, and his two daughters, with whom he maintains distant and complicated relationships: Nora (Renate Reinsve), the elder and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), the younger. This pain accompanies the viewer throughout this family narrative charged with emotion. In a dreamlike sequence three-quarters of the way through the film, the three characters' faces merge against a dark background in a disturbing interplay of almost monstrous combinations, with their slightly moist eyes always standing out in the light.

More prosaically, the trio also inherits an old house in Oslo that belongs to Gustav's family, where Sissel, his ex-wife, lived until her death, which marks the beginning of the story. In this large house with red-streaked dark wood and a garden, Nora and Agnes grew up. They witnessed their parents argue and then separate there, secretly spied on their psychologist mother's sessions, and played at racing down the grand staircase. It was also there, much earlier, that Nora and Agnes's great-great-grandfather died, and their grandmother was born and later died under painful circumstances.

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