Affeksjonverdi (Sentimental Value): Trier and Reinsve return in Competition
Joachim Trier returns in Competition, four years after introducing the world to the brilliance of Renate Reinsve, winner of the Award for Best Actress for her role in Verdens verste menneske (The Worst Person in the World). The actress, who has since achieved global fame, reunites with the Norwegian director in a very personal film: Affeksjonverdi (Sentimental Value).
It’s been quite a long time since Gustav has seen his daughters. When he comes back into their lives, he offers his eldest, Nora, a role in his next film: playing the girls’ mother. She turns him down. In the end, he casts a young Hollywood star named Rachel Kempf. The choice brings painful memories back to the surface, ones that father and daughters cannot ignore.
This examination of human behavior and interpersonal dynamics has been a characteristic of Joachim Trier’s films ever since his first feature Reprise (2006), a portrait of two passionate young men driven by their ambition to be writers. Almost 20 years later, Trier gives us Affeksjonverdi (Sentimental Value), a portrait of a man whose success as a director is matched only by his failure as a father. Without veering into the autobiographical, Trier, a father of two like Gustav, has his protagonist adopt the filmmaker’s same approach of probing, inquiring, exploring. He spoke to Vanity Fair about being intrigued by this idea of a family coming back together and working out their differences:
“We have this impossible relationship between a daughter and a father, almost like a sad love story. But they’re so similar. Within the home of the creative life, they can actually meet.”
For this portrayal of a family reunited within the whirl and flurry of intense emotions, Joachim Trier collaborates for the first time with the superb Stellan Skarsgård. The sisters are played by Renate Reinsve – a loyal collaborator of Trier’s ever since delivering a single line in her brief appearance in Oslo, 31. august (Oslo, August 31st) (Un Certain Regard, 2011) – and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, a 36-year-old actress from Norway. Rounding out the stellar cast is Elle Fanning as Rachel Kempf. Affeksjonverdi (Sentimental Value) marks the actress’s third appearance in Competition, after Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon (2016) and Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled (2017).
