Sentimental Value comes freighted with hype, winner of Grand Prix award at Cannes and beloved at TIFF. I’m thrilled to say it deserving of all of that, and more. Joachim Trier’s delicate drama, laced with jabs of comedy, is deeply moving. It’s set mostly in a house in Oslo, but it isn’t a single location drama. It’s about a dysfunctional family, where there’s still a lot of love beneath the anger and recrimination. It’s about deeply fucked-up creative people who still manage to find success through their art. And plumbs intergenerational trauma like a certain excellent film from this festival season, and how art can contextualize said trauma, and provide healing, like another excellent film from this festival season.
Renate Reinsve is the heart of this thing, giving a fantastic performance as Nora Borg, a beloved but anxious theatre actor. She’s estranged from her filmmaker father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgaard), who is back in her life with a new project he’d like her to act in. She turns him down flat, so he engages an American star, Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), to play the role. Then there’s Nora’s sister, Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), who has a husband and nine-year-old son and is only slightly more accommodating of their father’s reemergence.
Though Trier takes a number of swings here, and most work well — from unexpected flashbacks to the meta threads of a film about a filmmaker and his new project where we sometimes find ourselves in scenes where performers are performing — none of it would work if it weren’t for his fantastic cast.
Reinsve and Skarsgaard have almost uncomfortable chemistry — witness a scene where they have a cigarette outside that wonderful house. But it’s her face that delivers all the emotion she can’t communicate in words. An astonishing performance.
If I’d known that Lilith Fair: Building A Mystery by Ally Pankiw was going to arrive on CBC Gem on Wednesday I probably wouldn’t have bothered to see it screened at the Atlantic International Film Festival, but then the unexpected power of the documentary wouldn’t have likely had the same effect on me at home.
It’s a terrific doc about Sarah McLachlan’s travelling festival that changed the culture over three years, 1997 to 1999, touring across Canada and the United States fronting female performers only. It makes a point of catching up with many, if not most of the performers who participated (no Fiona Apple, unfortunately) to collect their memories of the era and festival. Prior to Lilith, most rock radio formats wouldn’t play two women back to back, and two women certainly didn’t share a touring stage thanks to systemic sexism. Lilith went some way to changing that, and it’s wonderful to hear the testimony of acts like Sheryl Crow, Emmylou Harris, Natalie Merchant, Jewel, Missy Elliott, and the Indigo Girls on why it was special.
McLachlan’s openness to own her mistakes — it was pretty white when it started — as well as celebrate her triumphs is refreshing, but what really puts the doc over the top is all the rare footage of performances on stages around the continent, especially the collaborations — McLachlan and Sinead O’Connor singing “Angel,” their voices harmonizing beautifully on that song, just about broke me.
Another favourite moment was Crow talking about what an inspiration it was to sing with Bonnie Raitt — they sounded so good together on Crow’s “If It Makes You Happy.” There’s a lot of nostalgia here, but also an acknowledgement of the ways the festival was genuinely groundbreaking.
