Norwegian Director Joachim Trier Talks ‘Sentimental Value’: ‘People That Deny Emotions Make Terrible Choices’

“Brat” summer is dead — long live “Joachim Trier Summer,” as proclaimed by Elle Fanning, and her playful T-shirt, at Cannes. 

“After three years of hard work, I’d love to have a three-year-long summer,” laughs the Danish-born Norwegian director after the premiere of “Sentimental Value.”

Starring Renate Reinsve — reuniting with Trier after the hit “The Worst Person in the World” — Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Fanning, it premiered to rave reviews. But unlike some other Palme d’Or contenders, it touched the audience as well. 

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“I’m grateful and a bit exhausted, but most of all relieved. I had a feeling yesterday that people received it well, and I was in a room with a lot of love. It’s an emotional, personal piece of cinema,” he tells Variety.

In the film, sisters Nora (Reinsve) and Agnes (Lilleaas) have to say goodbye to their late mother — and hello to their absentee father Gustav, a film director struggling to get new feature off the ground. But he recently wrote a script about his own mom, who killed himself when he was a boy. And wants the newly famous Nora to play the lead. 

Although he’s talking about a fellow director, Trier “doesn’t feel like Gustav,” he says.  

“I started writing it from the perspective of the sisters and then I tried to humanize Gustav. He comes from a completely different generation; he’s a part of that ‘80s, ‘90s cinema. But you’re right: maybe I’m exercising my anxieties of what it’s like to come to an end of a directorial career?”

He adds: “That’s why I like Westerns: so many of them are about the end of an era. That’s just the way things go. Many people from that generation are slowly fading away from our industry, and one day it’ll be my turn.” 

Before he wanders away like John Wayne in “The Searchers,” Trier’s happy to talk about “Sentimental Value” and the main trio who’s back at their old house and facing old secrets — including that of Gustav’s mother’s past. 

“The hardest part was to represent the past traumas of the Second World War, which I know from my family. It takes it into a slightly more political or historical perspective than I have in some of my other films. I grew up with a grandfather who was in the resistance and was tremendously traumatized: he was caught and barely survived. It created a climate of survival in the homes of our parents’. And that affected emotional communication.”

Trier “wanted to explore how inherited grief travels through the house and through the family.” Working with regular co-writer Eskil Vogt made it easier to get some distance. 

“There’s also this notion of humanist cinema. I can’t write about antagonists, even though the world is all about that right now. The antagonist and ‘the other’ as an enemy. It doesn’t interest me. I’m interested in understanding the complexity of why people end up hurting and disappointing each other. I’m interested in tenderness. I think it comes from the director’s personality as well. I genuinely … like people. I’m an extrovert and I’m curious. And if some find that style too ‘emotional,’ fuck it. That’s who I am.” 

Gustav’s avoiding emotions, which makes things hard for his daughters. But at least he can write a script. 

“That’s the core of the story: that’s all he can do. In the beginning, we think he’s an asshole for doing it. We think he’s trying to benefit from Nora’s fame. I’m generalizing a bit, but Gustav Borg, and other men of his generation, weren’t raised with the capacity for that emotional, tender language,” he says.

“I get asked a lot about gender perspectives on characters. I need these characters to be myself as well. They’re me and then they are not. I know Renate, so she can come back with some feedback. But why should it be easier to write a man like Gustav, so much older than me, than to write a woman who’s closer to my age?” he wonders.

“Me, I was [allowed to cry]. I used to skateboard, and we did talk a lot about emotions, but we were also kind of tough. I broke my arms and legs, and that’s not when you cry. There’s this kind of shamefulness around it, but people that deny emotions make terrible choices.”

A third-generation filmmaker, he’s had a camera in his hands all his life. “It’s easier for me than writing or doing anything else.” But while Gustav hires U.S. star (Fanning) to act in his English-language movie, Trier enjoys his own way of working for now. 

“When I grew up, everyone was playing music. I was a shitty drummer and got kicked out of the punk band I was in. But I’m a filmmaker now, and I try to have the same band,” he says.

“This industry is so big. I love experimentation, and I love mainstream, but I’d say: Maybe we can do something in between? That’s a big question: Can you stay at home and be successful? Right now, I’m experiencing my dream, which was to be a local band that had fans around the world. ‘Fans’ sounds a bit pretentious, but at least an audience,” he says. 

“With this one, it really felt like we were in it for the right reasons. We have Neon in the U.S., and they’re doing a great job, but what’s Hollywood today, really? I love the fact we have films with Tom Cruise, and I will see ‘Mission: Impossible,’ but I’d never compromise the kind of creative control I’ve had from film one. I don’t know another system that could offer me this way of working.”

He doesn’t take it for granted, he admits. 

“With every film, I have this little demon at the back of my head, telling me it’s the last one. You never feel safe. Making a film means always going through a little bit of a crisis. I remember reading an interview with Philip Roth once, and he said that with every new book, it felt impossible. I found it so comforting.”