Munich Filmfest 2025 part 2: "Sentimental Value"
The Work Week, a European heatwave, Sentimental Value, and not-for-me films: Militantropos, Brides, and American Sweatshop.
It’s back to the normal 9–5 work-week, saving the evenings for cinemagoings but sacrificing the morning press and industry screenings.
A record heatwave is once again gurgling through Europe. While my workplace is well air-conditioned—ironically at a climate sustainability company—not all cinema rooms are created equal. Germans don’t go to the cinema in the summer, partly due to the lack of AC but also to enjoy those precious warm outdoor days until the switch flips in October. But a film festival demands cinema attendance.
So how does one square the circle?
One of the big Munich Filmfest entries is Cannes Grand Prix winner “Sentimental Value”, Joachim Trier’s newest Oslo film starring regulars Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie, and now featuring Stellan Skarsgård and Elle Fanning. Skarsgård arrived at the Filmfest as the film’s celebrity appearance and to receive the festival’s CineMerit Award. Despite giving two rambling, late-night Q&As and briefly forgetting how many children (eight, many of whom are in the film industry), Skarsgård remains charming and full of stories.
Fittingly, in “Sentimental Value”, Skarsgård plays filmmaker Gustav Berg, who is attending a retrospective in his honor at a Cannes-like beach festival. There, he meets American starlet Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), who becomes interested in the lead role in his next film—a part he originally wrote for his estranged daughter Nora (Renate Reinsve), an actress who has refused the role. The script is personal, echoing the life of Gustav’s own mother.
Gustav first approaches Nora at his ex-wife's, Nora's mother's, wake at the Berg family home. That same home saw the birth of four generation's of Berg's and several deaths, one being Gustav's mother's suicide. "Sentimental Value" then, as we learn from the generational relations played out in Gustav's attempt at connection and Nora's attempt at deflection, doesn't always suggest something positive.
Joachim Trier's cool command of story and personal drama is firing on all cylinders here, with his previous film "The Worst Person in the World" feeling like a tiny YA adaptation in comparison to the Berg family. No less powerful is Trier's suggestion that cinema might be the antidote to cycles of generational trauma.
"Sentimental Value" is particularly concerned with Gustav's attempt to make amends and Nora's attempt to resist. Two stubborn artists acting like the rock and a hard place. What does it mean, and how authentic is it, for a father to suddenly care again—seemingly out of nowhere—right when he needs his daughter to play the main lead in his film (potentially for financing reasons) that he explicitly wrote in oder to re-connect with her? In return, at what point can you hold a grudge against a parent who's seemingly greatest sin was being distant while growing up—likely due to film shoots plus a divorce—and now can't decide to what level the amends-making is legit?
Career-high performances is rare for an actor towards the end of his 150-film career, for another who became mega-famous in blockbusters as a child, and another who broke out internationally with Trier's last release, yet that’s exactly what "Sentimental Value" gives us from Skarsgård, Fanning, and Reinsve.
To answer the question posed above about squaring the circle: you sweat and drink and a cold glass of beer.
You can do both of these things at the Beergarden Convention, which I’ve both gotten into and not gotten into twice; a perfect harmony, as it should be.
While sitting here at the BG, it’s nearly impossible to think about the other films I watched, which includes “Militantropos” (Ukrainian war doc, now unfortunately a dime-a-dozen through guilt-ridden subsidization), “Bride” (two teen-age first-gen British girls escape to Turkey en route to becoming ISIS brides), and “American Sweatshop” (a young woman working as a content moderator can’t separate graphic online images from reality). “Sentimental Value” is simply so much better, a real Film to chew on, unlike the others.
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