“Sentimental Value” is the Thanksgiving film for the fractured family

For as tender and quietly introspective as Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” eventually becomes, the Norwegian writer-director’s latest film opens in a frenzy. Nora (Renate Reinsve), a young but respected theater actor starring in a flashy new production of Chekov’s “The Seagull,” is deep in the throes of a panic attack. Stricken with a bout of crippling stage fright, Nora’s nerves have turned her into a roiling whirlpool of carnal impulse, using sex and violence to try to get out of stepping onstage. When neither works, Nora tears at her costume and hair before being calmed to a lull by stagehands who successfully manage to get their star in front of the audience and on her mark. It’s not that Nora is nervous about the performance. Rather, she’s worried about what the response will be. What will people say? How will they feel? How can she communicate her truth to a full house while still embodying the character they’ve come to the theater expecting to see?

Every fourth Thursday in November, millions of Americans endure a similar challenge, spending their Thanksgiving holidays trying to strike a delicate balance between their own reality and someone else’s ideas. Flights, train trips and car rides are spent practicing small talk and drafting responses to Uncle Joe’s newly adopted antivax rhetoric, slurred between sips of pinot noir and bites of dry turkey. Canned answers to prying questions about career mistakes and bumps in our personal lives must be at the ready the moment the festivities begin. In an effort to avoid ruining a rare family gathering, we must give a little, but not too much. We hope to be seen and understood, but only well enough to make it through dessert. It’s remarkable how quickly we can become strangers to the family we grew up surrounded by, and unfortunate how easily we can become content with that estrangement, treating the holidays as a requirement instead of an opportunity.

That NEON is releasing “Sentimental Value” stateside this month is no surprise, given how plainly the film contends with the brand of familial strain that has become as synonymous with American Thanksgiving as pumpkin pie. Nora’s life has been marked by it. Her father, the revered director Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård), made Nora’s younger sister, Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), the star of one of his most acclaimed films. Though their career paths diverged as Agnes pursued a life outside of the arts, Nora and her sister have remained close, despite the fact that Nora could never bond with their father the way Agnes could. So, when Gustav reveals that he’s written a new film for Nora to star in, the invitation feels sudden, as though it may have strings attached. Trier wisely leaves the specifics of this father-daughter tension vague, painting his characters gingerly and with loving detail until the knockout final stretch of the film pulls back, revealing a full family portrait. The closing portion of “Sentimental Value” sharpens perspective, informing us that Trier’s film isn’t so much about the ties that bind as it is the unconventional methods of communication used to shorten their length.

Soon after Nora’s play opens, her mother dies, bringing Gustav and his two daughters back to their family home, passed down through the Borg family’s generations. It’s that century-old house where the sisters were raised, and where Nora learned to be a comfort for her younger sister, raising Agnes between their father’s extended absences, her mother’s busy therapy practice, and the loud, inevitable quarrels their parents had whenever they reunited. As an adult, acting provides Nora with the chance to emote in a way that she never could when she was younger, always prioritizing Agnes’ comfort and her sister’s relationship with her father over her own feelings. But when Nora and Gustav meet at a coffee shop after the wake, her father’s introduction of a newly finished screenplay comes as a shock. Gustav hasn’t shown up at any of Nora’s performances, yet he insists that she star in his long-awaited directorial comeback. Whether the script is an attempt to make up for lost time or a last-ditch effort at staging a career resurgence, Nora isn’t interested. The screenplay’s binding remains uncracked.

That is, until Gustav meets the massively popular American actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning, in a sublime, career-best turn) at a film festival staging a retrospective of his work. Rachel is taken with Gustav’s films, and the director sees a familiar spark of brilliance in the young ingenue. The pair decides to move forward with Gustav’s new film together, with Rachel starring in the role written for Nora, seemingly based on Gustav’s mother, who died by suicide when Gustav was a boy. The film will be shot in the now-empty Borg family home, aiming for as much authenticity as possible, while doubly ensuring that Nora and Agnes remain in the production’s orbit, no matter how reluctant they are.

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Trier trusts his audience to understand that something deeper and more thorny is afoot here, without laying out information plainly. In complicated family dynamics like these, everyone’s individual feelings cause fact to blend into fiction and vice versa. Though the two overlap, Nora’s childhood experience is not the same as her sister’s, and seeing Agnes welcome their father back into her life, though with due hesitation, creates a distinct feeling of guilt that hangs over “Sentimental Value.” Being in the same room as an immediate family member — someone that we should feel an innate biological connection to — but not being able to truly communicate and bond with them is inherently bleak, especially when a sibling can do that job so much better. There’s shame and defeat in this process, an unavoidable regret that makes both suffering parties feel small. It’s no wonder Nora is drawn to the stage. It’s a place where she’s allowed to transmit herself to a curious audience without being cut down in the moment, a platform to become larger than life.

In the back half of the film, Rachel meets with Nora on her turf, sitting together in the empty seats of the theater one afternoon before a show. Despite her director’s trust, Rachel can’t seem to connect with her character. She knows that Gustav’s film is deeply personal and fears doing the story an injustice or poisoning a memory. Gustav has translated the script into English to accommodate his star, but even a stunning monologue that Rachel performs during one rehearsal doesn’t feel quite right. Perhaps the translation is off, or maybe something else needs tinkering; dyeing her hair Nora’s exact shade of brown doesn’t help, nor does attempting to do the film in a Norwegian accent. No matter how hard she tries, Rachel can’t become Nora, and Nora can’t become whatever version of her paternal grandmother Gustav’s script wants her to be. Intimacy and love can be performed, but that doesn’t always mean they’re authentic.

(Christian Belgaux/Neon) Stellan Skarsgård as Gustav Borg and Renate Reinsve as Nora Borg in “Sentimental Value”

But Rachel’s frustration and eventual departure from the film spark something in the Borg family. There’s more at play here than meets the eye, something overlooked after too many years of being let down by Gustav and his many promises. Nora has been so focused on how hurt she feels in her father’s presence that she doesn’t notice the pockets of joy she shares with him, often found in small, silent moments of understanding, or a knowing look. By keeping their shared traumas largely undefined for most of the film, Trier allows the Borg family dynamics to be appropriately murky. The ensemble feels like a real, fractured unit that shares unspoken arrangements and lifelong knowledge of one another that doesn’t need to be verbalized to be understood. But all these things left unexpressed, Nora has no idea just how well she and her father know each other, even without words.

When Gustav decides that Agnes’ son would be perfect for a pivotal role in his film, he gives his second-born daughter the script to consider. Agnes can’t put it down and insists that Nora read it from cover to cover. There, in the confines of its pages, Nora recognizes that her father has a much more innate and perceptive knowledge of her that neither of them ever could’ve imagined. The film that is so clearly about Gustav’s own mother perfectly mirrors Nora’s life. Echoes of her personal catastrophes and softly spoken, reserved tenderness jump from the page. Estranged from her for so long, Gustav knew none of this. And yet, there is his daughter, vividly reflected in his art, as though the two had been close forever.

In an appropriately dialogue-free final sequence, Trier and “Sentimental Value” provide one of the most moving emotional reckonings of any film this year, an almost silent reconnection between a father and his daughter at the intersection of their paths. Through their shared reverence for art, Gustav and Nora find a way to converse without speech and to share ideas without discussion. They admit their faults and their shortcomings, apologize for the past and for the future. Neither of them can provide the other with the kind of relationship they need, but acknowledging this defect instead of spending so much time turning their heads from it allows Nora and Gustav the chance to move forward in a way that is unique to them. Guilt and love are two of the most overwhelmingly powerful human emotions, and trying to endure either one alone is a losing game.

That “Sentimental Value” film will reach American audiences — who are already so divided and increasingly resolute in that division — right around the holidays, is blissfully fitting. Trier’s film overflows with the kind of genuinely impactful potential that we go to the movies for, the type that leaves us feeling understood more than it makes us feel good. Love and affection run past the margins, brushing up against shame and fear for a conclusion that’s akin to lingering a bit longer after a holiday dinner. Pour another cup of coffee, ask one more question, hear one more story, if only to understand each other a little better before we return to our own lives.