Renate Reinsve

SENTIMENTAL VALUE: generational healing

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Photo caption: Stellan Skarsgard and Renate Reinsve in SENTIMENTAL VALUE. Courtesy of NEON.

Sentimental Value opens with Norway’s top stage actress, Nora Borg (Renate Reinsve) on the verge of an epic stage fright meltdown on opening night. Afterwards, she and her historian sister Agnes (Inga Ibdotter Lilleaas) try to get through the funeral of their mother. Unexpectedly, their estranged father Gustave (Stellan Skarsgaard) appears at the family gathering to pay his expects…and perhaps more. Having seen little of their father since they were young girls, Nora and Agnes find his surprising visit to be less of a comfort and perhaps even a provocation. Nevertheless, Gustave plods forth, trying to make nice.

Gustave is a famous European art film director at the end of his career. He’s now ready to make his final film, and he’s written a screenplay for Nora to star in. Still, raging at his decades of emotional neglect, Nora refuses.

Gustave persists hanging around, and lucks into casting the major Hollywood star Rachel (Elle Fanning) as his lead. Awkwardly, Gustave still owns the family home, which never got transferred during the divorce. Now he plans to use it as the shooting location for the film.

Both Nora and Agnes were traumatized by their parents’ breakup. Nora’s anxiety and attachment issues are more obvious, but Agnes’ life has been affected too.

Gustave is self-absorbed, stubborn and often emotionally tone-deaf. But what made him that way? Writer-director Joachim Trier reveals the history of the Borg family home, through flashbacks and through Agnes’ research. What happened in the house to Gustave’s mother molded her. And what Gustave saw of his mother molded him, too. Now, the family dominoes have continued to fall on Nora and Agnes.

Joachim Trier is one of contemporary cinema’s greatest story-tellers, as he has demonstrated in his breakthrough film Reprise, the grievously overlooked Louder Than Bombs and his Oscar-nominated The Worst Person in the World, which also starred Reinsve. Here, we think we’re watching a conventional family drama about a long-absent father, until Trier pulls us into a study of inter-generational emotional damage.

Reinsve and Skarsgard have justly received loads of recognition for their superbly nuanced performances. I was just as impressed by the work of Inga Ibdotter Lilleaas as Agnes, who becomes more and more central as the story evolves.

Trier, Skarsgard and Reinsve will be in the hunt for Oscar nominations for their work here. Sentimental Value is in theaters.

THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD: funny, poignant, original and profoundly authentic

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Photo caption: Renate Reinsve in THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD. Courtesy of NEON.

One of the very Best Movies of 2022 is finally available to watch at home. In writer-director Joachim Trier’s masterpiece The Worst Person in the World, Julie (Renate Reinsve) is roaring through her life like a locomotive in search of tracks. She’s a medical student until she isn’t, having decided that her passion is psychology instead. Then, she’s convinced her avocation is photography. Each career plunge is accompanied by a new hairstyle and a new boyfriend. She’s charming and talented – and completely restless and unreliable. Surely she can’t keep up this pace of self-reinvention forever, can she?

Julie falls in love with Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie) a graphic novelist in his forties, and settles into a dead end retail job in a bookstore and a role as the young companion of a literary figure. Rocking a black cocktail dress for an event celebrating Aksel, she sneaks out and crashes another party. There, she meets the barista Eivind (Herbert Nordrum), and they flirt, after deciding not to cheat on their partners.

Is Julie going to dump Aksel and break up Eivind’s relationship? Real life is more complicated than that, and so is The Worst Person in the World, which maintains a profound authenticity through its moments of silliness, sexiness and poignancy.

I’ve been a huge fan of Trier, since his first feature Reprise, which I named the 4th best movie of 2005. I didn’t care for his well-crafted follow-up Oslo, August 31. But I’ve been strongly recommending his under-appreciated Louder Than Bombs. Reprise is available to stream on Amazon, and you can find the other two on many streaming platforms.

Famed director Howard Hawks said that a great movie has “three great scenes and no bad scenes.” There are no bad scenes in The Worst Person in the World, and Trier hits Hawk’s mark with the moments when:

  • Julie, on her 30th birthday, reflects on what her mother, grandmother and other female ancestors were doing when they were 30.
  • Julie and Eivind meet and share nonsexual intimacies – which is smolderingly sexy.
  • Time stands still for the rest of Oslo when Julie has the impulse to find Eivind again.

The title of the film does not refer to Julie; it’s a self-deprecating joke by another character, who is a good person himself.

Renate Reinsve is relentlessly appealing as Julie; Reinsve won the best actress award at Cannes. Lie (who starred in Reprise and Oslo, August 31) and Nordrum are also superb.

Technically, The Worst Person in the World is a romantic comedy, but it’s so smart, so authentic and so original, I can’t bring myself to describe it as such. The Worst Person in the World is Oscar-nominated both for Trier’s screenplay and for best international feature film. After an extremely limited year-end Oscar qualifying run and a couple of weeks in theaters in February, The Worst Person in the World can now be streamed from Amazon, Apple, Vudu, YouTube and redbox.

THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD: funny, poignant, original and profoundly authentic

by
Photo caption: Renate Reinsve in THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD. Courtesy of NEON.

In writer-director Joachim Trier’s masterpiece The Worst Person in the World, Julie (Renate Reinsve) is roaring through her life like a locomotive in search of tracks. She’s a medical student until she isn’t, having decided that her passion is psychology instead. Then, she’s convinced her avocation is photography. Each career plunge is accompanied by a new hairstyle and a new boyfriend. She’s charming and talented – and completely restless and unreliable. Surely she can’t keep up this pace of self-invention forever, can she?

Julie falls in love with Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie) a graphic novelist in his forties, and settles into a dead end retail job in a bookstore and a role as the young companion of a literary figure. Rocking a black cocktail dress for an event celebrating Aksel, she sneaks out and crashes another party. There, she meets the barista Eivind (Herbert Nordrum), and they flirt, after deciding not to cheat on their partners.

Is Julie going to dump Aksel and break up Eivind’s relationship? Real life is more complicated than that, and so is The Worst Person in the World, which maintains a profound authenticity through its moments of silliness, sexiness and poignancy.

I’ve been a huge fan of Trier, since his first feature Reprise, which I named the 4th best movie of 2005. I didn’t care for his well-crafted follow-up Oslo, August 31. But I’ve been strongly recommending his under appreciated Louder Than Bombs. Reprise is available to stream on Amazon, and you can find the other two on many streaming platforms.

Famed director Howard Hawks said that a great movie has “three great scenes and no bad scenes.” There are no bad scenes in The Worst Person in the World, and Trier hits Hawk’s mark with the moments when:

  • Julie, on her 30th birthday, reflects on what her mother, grandmother and other female ancestors were doing when they were 30.
  • Julie and Eivind meet and share nonsexual intimacies – which is smolderingly sexy.
  • Time stands still for the rest of Oslo when Julie has the impulse to find Eivind again.

The title of the film does not refer to Julie; it’s a self-deprecating joke by another character, who is a good person himself.

Renate Reinsve is relentlessly appealing as Julie; Reinsve won the best actress award at Cannes. Lie (who starred in Reprise and Oslo, August 31) and Nordrum are also superb.

Technically, The Worst Person in the World is a romantic comedy, but it’s so smart, so authentic and so original, I can’t bring myself to describe it as such. This is one of the best movies of 2022. The Worst Person in the World is Oscar-nominated both for Trier’s screenplay and for best international feature film.