is there really no thread for joachim freaking trier?

SENTIMENTAL VALUE is extraordinary. from david erlich’s review:

Few recent movies have reconciled the difference between [“the resentful ocean of lost time that stretches between the truth of who their parents actually were, and the fiction of the characters they’ve created for them to play in their minds”] with the same tenderness that “Sentimental Value” achieves by the end of its soul-melting final sequence (though Charlotte Wells’ more haunted but equally poignant “Aftersun” comes to mind). Even fewer have so elegantly literalized how the love that parents are able to share with their children — and vice versa — can be limited by their ability to express it. Almost none have more beautifully explored the role that making art, which is to speak without talking, can play in facilitating that process.

hoping to see it this weekend. very much enjoyed oslo august 31 and the worst person in the world.

It's good.

Overrated. Reprise and Oslo 31. August were really good, but anything since then has been diminishing returns. Haven't seen Sentimental Value, though, but sounds like more of the same.

A review in the next Reverse Shot shares your, um, sentiments somewhat.

Often Sentimental Value is as garrulous as one of Ingmar Bergman's psychodramas where kids yell at their parents so often that you feel sorry for the terrible dad or mom (I'm thinking Autumn Sonata); but the ease with which Trier weaves the autofictional elements is impressive in itself. The three main performances are good, especially Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas. Elle Fanning brings a lot of authentic feeling to her part. It sports one of those endings you should've seen coming in the first half hour.

(I wasn't a fan of The Worst Person in the World).

not enough people love thelma. sapphic carrie = the most ivy movie ever

Alfred OTM. I mostly liked it but understand the haters. But right now Renate Reinsve can do no wrong in my book.

yeah Thelma's the best one imo

Hmm. Was barely aware of that one. Maybe I need to watch.

much of his back catalog is coming to criterion channel soon

i caught this last week

overall, i enjoyed it, though i definitely felt quite bored/impatient for it to end at some moments. i think the choice to have the scenes end abruptly, cut to black, then slowly fade into the next scene might have contributed to the feeling of it being a "slog"

i felt myself breathe a small sigh of relief and felt myself relax when the cheerful smiling americans showed up, like a spritz of bright citrus on a thick savoury plate of 'europeans sad for unspeakable reasons'

soundtrack had some great moments (the jazz in particular... yusuf lateef 'love theme from spartacus' :D) but also some confounding choices, iirc some american indie singer-songwriter stuff that felt off

feels like renate will be/already is one of the GOAT actresses of the current era. my attention flagged during the stretches where she was absent. i skipped 'worst person in the world' due to neg reviews by some friends but i am going to watch it (and 'oslo, august 31st') asap

two memorable scenes that i enjoyed
- skellan and renate sharing a cigarette outside after he gives his grandson the michael haneke dvds
- skellan's reaction to learning his old cinematographer friend now walks with a cane

kids yell at their parents so often that you feel sorry for the terrible dad or mom

i was impatient for them to forgive the poor bastard too

of those endings you should've seen coming in the first half hour

"should've" is otm here.. got my ass

i was surprised, due to my ignorance, at how lush the flora of oslo is. every time they went outside it was bursting with green leafy ferns

Renate Reinsve also good recently in A Different Man and Armand.

Thought it was interesting that Stellan Skårsgard wasn't overplaying his Bad Dad part, but then again perhaps both the actor and the character did not have the energy they once had.

Also there was just a Bo Widerberg retro in NYC, and clearly there was some bleed from him into this since Bo also put his kids in his movies and Stellan had worked with him, so he appears in the recent documentary about him and mentions him in a interview about SV in the LA Times, which pull quote got mentioned more than once at the retro.

Actually at a recent Q&A with a certain notable actor and director pair, the actor talked about how a helicopter crash wasn't really nearly as exciting as indoor fireworks, which made want to tell him that he should go see The Man on the Roof except they weren't taking questions from the audience. #onethread

I quite enjoyed JAY KELLY, but SENTIMENTAL VALUE made me feel bad for Noah Baumbach - makes his film look even more like a glossy piece of Netflix fluff.

Often felt like a thesis about IKEA and a Scandinavian desire to whitewash history with folksy corporate modernism.

Also made me want to take up smoking again and listen to Terry Callier.

Just how transparent a metaphor was the flaw in the foundation and crack in the walls for the family's unexamined trauma?

really adored this movie, felt much more precise than the worst person in the world, although maybe a little too precise. just as i wondered if i was about to be emotionally moved by the movie, the sisters got to me. (i don't have any siblings but if i've learned anything in my thousand years of torment on this earth it's that the family is a completely fucked thing but sisters are very very very important)

elle fanning in a thankless role where she has to portray an actress who cannot inhabit the feeling of the movie she's trying to be in, and she's fucking phenomenal at it

between this and her scenes in a complete unknown, call me an elle FAN-ning

It's lived in my head longer than The Worst Person....

I watched Somewhere for the first time last night and she already projected such an aura of unaffected guilelessness.

ivy otm

she already projected such an aura of unaffected guilelessness.

― The Luda of Suburbia (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, December 4, 2025 10:58 AM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh do u mean she wasn't a child with jazz hands????

ooooooh
she's here again
the child with the jazzzzz haaaaands

Was really looking forward to the new one after The Worst Person in the World, which I loved (primarily because of the one long monologue I quote all the time--about the world of physical media disappearing--but I liked the whole film). Found it kind of pat, though, especially the ending. I liked the flashback to a early '70s party and people dancing to--had to track it down--Johnny Thunder's "I'm Alive."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ_wzLVhJSs

So not that Johnny Thunders; it's the same guy who did "Loop De Loop" in 1963.

i tried to hold this in but i am privately fuming at k3v for giving this thread a faux-befuddled ilx circa 2003 "what, no X thread?!" style title

lol

I was feeling nostalgic ~~

Turn back, you ultima thule!

This was extremely moving. Sins of the father displayed with all its subtleties. No one really changes. Gustav is immovable yet charming, Agnes is patient and restrained, Nora is "sensitive" and wrathful. And they all inhabit one another. Erik will pick up the same and so it's right for him to be part of Gustav's film. An early, open communication that the others missed out on. Dad and daughter are able to talk through the mediation of art. Gustav's mother and daughter sharing the same malady, leading to his own alienation + host of issues. The suggestion of "it all comes back the nazis", a move that can only be trite in any other case, works here as it is one suggestion amongst many to the question of "how is it that we get so fucked up"? There was something so funny about Even, the way he has zero comprehension of the complexities of this family drama he has entered into, a "please i do not want to be involved" aura, a affirmation that the/this family is a silo, impenetrable even by marriage and child-rearing.

I liked SV and thought the performances were great, but I also thought its narrative arc was so predictable that I got impatient in the second half. Really think it could’ve been a good 20 minutes shorter (and better for it).

watched this last night and thought it was pretty good. the performances are great but it took me until the last 30 mins or so to fully connect with any of the characters (looking back, i guess this was around the time that agnes visited the library and started to understand her father on a deeper level). the photography is stunningly beautiful tho. was thinking to myself, “great i have a rooting interest in the cinematography category” before realizing this was somehow not even nominated. the fuck?

I liked SV and thought the performances were great, but I also thought its narrative arc was so predictable that I got impatient in the second half. Really think it could’ve been a good 20 minutes shorter (and better for it).

ranate was robbedsve

lol otm