In Sentimental Value, a famous director seeks to reconnect with his daughter, Nora, the only way he knows how—through a film. But those broken bonds can be hard to reforge, and this can be a hard film to watch. The performances are first rate, but viewers must navigate the topic of suicide, a bit of nudity and some profanity.
An empty home is never empty. The memories remain.
They remain in the kitchen, filled with scent and laughter. On the stairway where someone fell. In the bedroom where someone was born … or someone died.
The Borg’s home in Norway teems with memories, good and bad. Four generations have opened its windows and slammed its doors. Nora wrote stories and rehearsed lines in that house. She combed her sister’s hair, listened to her parents fight upstairs. And when her father left, Nora remembers the silence that followed.
But now, in the wake of her mother’s passing, Nora’s father—legendary director Gustav Borg—is back. And while he doesn’t bother attending the funeral, he does stop by the wake and suggest that he and Nora (now an accomplished Norwegian stage actress) “have a proper talk.”
Nora doesn’t want to talk. If Gustav really wanted to connect, he had plenty of time to do so already. He hasn’t made an effort in years. Maybe decades.
Nora’s sister, Agnes, encourages Nora to meet with him anyway. “At least he’s trying to be a dad,” she says.
But is he?
When the two sit down to talk in a local restaurant, Gustav has movies on his mind. After years away from the film business, Gustav’s written a new screenplay—a deeply personal one. “I want you in the lead role,” he says. “I wrote it for you. You’re the only one who can play it.”
Tough luck, Nora tells him. She’s not interested in his screenplay, and she’s certainly not interested in working with him. She storms out, leaving her stoic father close to tears.
Gustav told Nora that only she could play the part—the part that perhaps she was born to play. And when she refuses, it seems like the end.
Or so it did, until Gustav attends the Cannes Film Festival and meets Rachel Kemp, a famous American actress and an admirer of the great Gustav Borg. As the two talk, Gustav reconsiders.
Perhaps Nora’s not the only one who can play the part. Perhaps working with Rachel—a celebrity with talent, clout and a name big enough to draw money for the project—might be just the ticket.
“My father is a very difficult person,” Nora tells Rachel. “But he’s not without his merits.” Nora admits that Gustav is a dynamite director, and we see him treat Rachel with gentle sensitivity. Toward the end of their working relationship, he feels a bit like a father to her. Maybe it’s fitting that Rachel—an unexpectedly kind and sensitive character—repeatedly says how important it is for her to do justice to Gustav’s character: She doesn’t want to let him down.
But the part was written for Nora, and Gustav is hoping that the project might help the two bridge their estrangement. We see that Gustav has a hard time connecting to people in real life: Perhaps (we imagine him thinking) he can draw Nora closer through this film.
Nora’s relationship with her sister, Agnes, is far less fraught. The two see each other often and obviously care deeply for one another. That’s especially important in context: Nora struggles with anxiety and depression, and Agnes does her best to help. If Nora is adrift, Agnes serves as her anchor. If Nora’s not returning calls, Agnes drives to her apartment and forces connection. And while she knows as well as Nora how difficult their father can be, Agnes serves as the family’s peacemaker, looking for points of real connection when she can.
At one point, Nora wonders how Agnes managed to turn out so well. After all, they grew up in the same home and shared the same experiences. Nora wonders why Agnes seems to have it all together and Nora herself does not. Agnes offers a poignant answer: She had Nora. Growing up, Nora was Agnes’ anchor—her friend, her confidante, sometimes her de-facto mother. “I felt safe,” Agnes tells Nora. And that sense of safety made all the difference.
Gustav has Rachel read a critical scene in his screenplay: A despondent mother (Gustav’s main character) confesses that she’s an atheist, but she heard once that “praying isn’t really talking to God. It’s acknowledging despair.” The character outlines how one day, when she was at the end of her rope, she found herself praying: “I don’t know who I said it to, but I said it out loud.” It was a plea for help, a confession that she couldn’t do it (whatever “it” might be in the context of the play) all alone.
The funeral for Agnes and Nora’s mother takes place in a church. When Nora asks why Gustav wasn’t there, he expresses a disdain for churches, and he notes that his late wife wasn’t particularly religious, either.
Nora is involved with a married man. We see the two of them in bed together, and part of Nora’s unclothed side and legs are visible. She and her paramour kiss and cuddle, and she jokes that it’s ideal that he’s married: It keeps their shared intimacy at arm’s length.
Nora tries to seduce the man right before she goes on stage, telling him that she’s a bit nervous and could use the release. She kisses him and pulls him toward her.
Later, when the man announces that he’s getting a divorce, Nora tries to kiss him—but he rejects the overture. “I just don’t know,” he says. He walks away, suggesting that their relationship is over.
As mentioned, Nora’s childhood home has sheltered generations of Borgs, and one of them was a lesbian. We see the woman and her female partner kiss passionately and snuggle. They throw raucous parties during the libertine 1960s, where various couples dance and cuddle. This atmosphere, we’re told, made an impression on a young Gustav Borg: We see him in the backyard, eyeing the bare breast of one of the house’s guests.
A grown-up Gustav took those early experiences to heart. He tells Nora and Agnes that he could’ve never married an actress. Nora rebuts that it didn’t stop him from sleeping with them (using a much crasser Norwegian word). Gustav shamelessly (but rather harmlessly) flirts with a number of much younger women.
Erik, Nora’s 9-year-old nephew, asks Nora about her love life. Nora admits that she’d like a boyfriend, but it’s not always so easy. Erik tells Nora that he’d like to marry Nora when he grows up. “It’s nice of you to say,” Nora says. “But it’s impossible.” “I know,” Erik says.
Some of Nora’s outfits reveal a bit of cleavage.
Gustav insists that his new screenplay is not about his mother. But she and Gustav’s main character share a lot of similarities, including the fact that both hang themselves.
Gustav walks Rachel through the critical closing scene in his script, leading her into the actual room where his mother died. He tells Rachel that the stool in the room was the very same stool his mother stood on in her final seconds (though that turns out to be a lie). A flashback takes us back to the actual suicide, too. Gustav’s mother simply stands up, walks down a hallway, enters a back room and closes the door. We hear the thump of a stool or chair falling shortly after.
It’s suggested that Gustav’s mother was deeply scarred from her time in German custody during World War II, when she was a part of the Norwegian resistance movement against the Nazis. Agnes looks at records of the torture her grandmother endured while in prison: Clamps around the woman’s legs were tightened until she screamed; she was tied against a hot stove; she was beaten with a rod. Her file is accompanied by pictures of these events, all of which look painful and uncomfortable.
As mentioned in the previous content section, Nora tries to get her married beau to have sex with her. When he says there’s simply not enough time, Nora tells him to slap her (an attempt to snap her out of it)—and he quickly does. It’s not enough to ease her anxiety: She runs back to her dressing room and nearly tears off her outfit. Stagehands restrain her as others patch the rips in her clothes with duct tape.
One of Gustav’s earlier films appears to be a World War II drama. In its closing scenes, two children try to escape from the Nazis. One escapes, but the other struggles to free himself from the grips of the soldier holding him.
We learn that Nora attempted to kill herself sometime earlier. We hear about various familial deaths. We see a picture of someone, either dead or dying, in a bed.
During a play, Nora unleashes a soliloquy against a character in what appears to be a clerical collar, including some lines that seem to allude to faith: “You said you were going to save me,” Nora’s character says, but instead “you led me to the flames.” As she continues, the character laments how she let “my children into your home.” We don’t know the full context of the speech, but it seems to suggest that the play may have something to do with an abusive priest.
[Note: The majority of Sentimental Value’s dialogue is in Norwegian, with English subtitles. Though about a quarter of the film is in English.]
There are seven f-words, three s-words and a dribble of other profanities, including “crap,” “d–n” and “h—.” God’s name is misused five times, three of which also feature the word “d–n.” Jesus’ name is abused twice.
Most characters drink, but Gustav often drinks to excess (especially in the wake of disappointment). One morning, he wakes up after passing out on the couch; he’s forced to hurriedly clean up the kitchen, especially some wine spilled on the table, before guests arrive. In another scene, he stands outside, drinking heavily as the wind howls. He’s found the next morning, unconscious, on his lawn—apparently after suffering a heart attack. When he wakes up in the hospital, he almost immediately—and jokingly—asks for a glass of champagne.
Gustav’s drinking may contribute to some of the unkind things he says to his family, too. We often see him with a bottle of beer or glass of champagne in his hand. He and an old friend toast with glasses of whiskey.
Dinners and other events are awash in champagne and wine.
Nora sometimes deals with crippling stage fright.
[Spoiler Warning] Gustav was never told of Nora’s earlier suicide attempt. But it seems he suspects that his daughter has struggled with mental illness: Remember, he wrote the screenplay especially for her. After reading the play, Agnes confesses to Nora that the writing is so accurate and vivid to Nora’s own struggles that it’s as if Gustav was in the same room. Nora eventually does accept and play the part. And in the context of the film, the experience is meant to feel cathartic, drawing father and daughter closer together. But mental health experts suggest that’s atypical. They’d argue that playing a suicidal character—even if the actor is relatively balanced—comes with risks. And if the actor is struggling with depression or suicidal ideation, the risks can be exponentially greater.
If you or someone you know would like more resources to help with depression or suicidal ideation, visit FocusOnTheFamily.com. You can also call 1-800-A-FAMILY.
As Gustav works with the American star Rachel Kemp, Rachel peppers her director with questions. Why? Why does her character feel this way? Why is she suicidal? Why?
Invariably, Gustav pauses a beat, looks at his young star and asks, What do you think?
Gustav Borg once said that nothing was more beautiful than the shadows in his own home. And as a director, he works in those shadows—thoughts hidden, things unclear. His characters often stand still and silent as conflicting, unknowable emotions ripple across their faces, the “action” punctuated by tiny smiles or solitary tears.
This wordless intimacy, it’s suggested, made Gustav a great filmmaker. But that same intimacy was withheld from his family. Only in the context of making a film could the walls come down. Only then could truths be told.
And so when he asks his daughter to star in his latest, perhaps last, film, it goes beyond Gustav’s desire to leave one last great cinematic footprint (though that’s part of the mix, too). It’s a poignant, pathetic attempt to forge an overdue bond—to connect with his daughter who needed a father so many years before.
Sentimental Value connects, too. Though the movie is mostly in Norwegian, the performances are so strong that you scarcely notice. Renate Reinsve may earn her first Oscar nomination for her work as Nora. Stellan Skarsgård (Gustav) may join her. And the film comes with some messages about the power of family, too: its power to hold us together, its power to break us.
But the film plays with other sorts of shadows, too. Sentimental Value digs into the heavy topics of depression and suicide. It takes us into the bedroom of an out-of-wedlock relationship and offers a quick flash of nudity. For non-Norwegian speakers, profanity may be read more than it’s heard, but it’s still a part of the film.
Like Gustav’s films, Sentimental Value leaves us with more questions than answers. It withholds easy morals or takeaways and asks us to write our own. And given its difficult—perhaps triggering—subject matter, what some of us write may be dark indeed.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
