Sand you are not yet ready to face the relationship with your father, if you hesitate and cannot decide to take that step, you can rely on the masterful touch of Joachim Trier, screenwriter and director of Sentimental Valuea film nominated for eight Oscars. Too few compared to the multiple candidate Sinnersof which over time we will perhaps only remember the dance of the vampires.
Lulled by the rhythm of the Norwegian director, passing through glances, silences and magnificent dialogues, you will rebuild the difficult relationship between two daughters and their father, who left home too soonpursuing a career as a director, culminating in a single successful film. One of the girls, the eldest, will (fatally?) become a restless actress; the other essentially a solid and reliable wife and mother.
The father, due to a mournful event, will re-enter their lives (and in the fascinating family home that holds past lives), making them fibrillate. We won’t tell you anything else about the plot, because it’s really worth it for you to delve into it on your own, accepting that mixture of anxiety and fear that can make you jump in your seat, when you find yourself witnessing something that could have happened to you too.
Antonella Baccaro (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
Too often the problematic figure of the father, when it has not been elaborated over time, is removedespecially if there was an “absolute” mother, that is, capable of not making the most varied shortcomings felt.
Elle Fanning and Stellan Skarsgärd in a scene from “Sentimental Value” (photo by Kasper Tuxen Andersen).
Too little do we reflect on how much the relationships with the men in our lives derive from that untied knot. What women do we become if we have not felt the loving gaze of our father on us? «Women willing to have marginal relationships», admits the eldest daughter. «Angry women», suggests the father in one of the most terrible scenes. Perhaps we would say “unresolved women”.
The film suggests giving value to feelings, also to those of a father who, in turn, was a son, raised without closing accounts with the past. Now try taking a photo of your father-child and look him in the eyes: if you can find a glimmer of your own fears, perhaps the time has come to forgive him.
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Antonella Baccaro’s articles on I Woman and on Corriere della Sera.
