Sentimental Value

The premise of Sentimental Value, the new movie by Norwegian director Joachim Trier, has a classic simplicity, similar to some of Ingmar Bergman’s films about families. Two sisters cope with their difficult father when he returns to the scene after the death of their mother. The challenge of dramatizing such dynamics is to make it fresh, to explore new angles of an age-old situation. Trier, and his regular co-screenwriter Eskil Vogt have done that, by infusing the family story with ideas about acting and what it takes for performers to energize their work using the feelings and issues in their…