Sentimental Value

Sentimental Value has shown up well during awards season, and it has a stellar cast. It has been one of my most anticipated watches this year and now that the Oscars are breathing down my neck I have finally made time to actually see it. After meeting the main cast members I got even more excited to see it.

What is this girl’s problem? You get to be a lead onstage in front of 100s of people and we’re complaining? Girl this is the end of the rehearsal process I’m not sure what you thought the next step was. Yes, please pull it together.

So I’m working out of my Neon boxset that we get every year around awards season. Studios send out their movies and sometimes some other goodies to get you to pay attention to their films. It's the best part of the job honestly. And the other movies I’ve watched today are formatted like actual DVDs, but because I got this set before Sentimental Value actually came out I got a screener version. Which just means that occasionally watermarks pop up and there is no DVD menu and it's just funny.

Okay we seem to have switched to english about 15 minutes in. Now are we going to go back and forth like we should or are we sanitizing foreign stories for Americans? Okay good we are going back and forth. That is correct.

I love that these stories are running parallel to each other, obviously the assumption is that they are going to meet in the middle. Dad is a screenwriter/filmmaker and daughter is an actress. But he met another young, talented actress that wants to work with him. AND HE BROUGHT HER TO THE HOUSE. That’s actually insane. These girls are sorting through their dead mother’s things and you bring an actress and her entire team to this house? That is incredibly bold.

The way they can use real clips of a young Stellan Skarsgard because that man has been working forever.

I would like to point out that I have heard from a few Swedish people that this movie had similar language problems to Emilia Perez in that it was clearly written by someone who is not a native speaker and there are some weird word and grammar mistakes that make it difficult to watch. Now I am reading subtitles so I am only getting the intended language but that is worth noting in the final review. Also there was a title change for America, it was originally titled Affection and some feel that title was a better fit for the film.

“You’re so angry all the time, it's hard to love someone so filled with rage, you don’t want to be alone forever”. Sir what a batshit crazy thing to say to your child.

This scene with his actual daughter and the actress playing the part he wrote for her is so important. This girl cant connect to her part in the right way because it was never meant for her. See actors can be as good as they want but when a part is written, by a father for his daughter, for a specific person I think it's very easy for any other performance to fall flat.

The relationship between the sisters is also very well done. They have very different lives and very different personalities but they clearly care about each other so much. The scene where they are sitting across from each other and the non-acting sister had her read the script to her. They share this moment of what it was like when their dad left. And what they struggled with after that.

I also like that they centered the English around the American actress, like that was the only reason there was any English spoken at all. That was a great way to break up the language, it was meant to felt out of place and disjointed with the rest of the film because this actress wasn’t meant for this part.

The amount of internal work that was done in every single one of these characters is crazy. They worked through so much hurt and trauma, took little steps forward and we end with father and daughter reunited in the sweetest way possible. I love 9/10.