Imagine if one of the live transmissions from the theatre or opera that the Playhouse regularly participates in were delayed because an actor had a sudden attack of stage fright and couldn’t go onstage. The rest of the evening would likely be overshadowed by this experience and the sizeable technical crew needed to facilitate the broadcast undoubtedly irritated. At first, the actor tries to cover over her fright. “I’m just going over my lines,” she says. But then, things escalate. “I can’t breathe,” she says, trying to rip off her dress. “Don’t, don’t tear it,” begs one of the offstage dressers. But it’s too late—her elaborate costume requires a duct-tape repair.
The most powerful of several story arcs overlaid within the subtitled film “Sentimental Value” (MUBI), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse, and set in Norway, is unquestionably that of the world of cast casting and script preparing and actor coaching in theatre and filmmaking. The clever scene above, which opens the film—the play stars Nora, played by Renate Reinsve, and three priests in black cassocks—is of a precisely paced, utterly convincing panic attack. Nora hyperventilates, runs away from the crew who chase her, and even suggests intimacy with one of the technicians. As the music of the overture in the theatre onscreen suddenly stops and the assembled patrons start twittering, we cannot be sure if the play will go ahead at all (in a later scene Nora does, in fact, call in sick).
The story fluctuates between this fruitful back-stage-drama theme and the psychological burden on Nora and sister Agnes of their absentee father, Gustav, played by Stellan Skarsgård, a successful filmmaker—“my documentary is being screened in several countries”—and an alcoholic. “We can’t even communicate,” Nora says. “You’re always drunk.” Early in the film, at the wake for their mother, Agnes and Nora whisper, “I hope he doesn’t feel that suddenly he has to be a dad.” The whispering itself doubtless implies the keeping of secrets. The genius-father-who-neglects-his-family story has been made far too many times already; like every other rendition it has the fatal flaw of writing out the mother, who actually did bring up the children. True, there are some inventive notions—such as Gustav’s gift of his own DVDs for his grandson’s birthday, without considering the possibility that his daughter (the child’s mother) doesn’t own a DVD player.
The ingenious idea that propels the film is the introduction of Gustav’s new film project, loosely about his mother’s suicide, for which he brassily assumes Nora will play the lead role—“I wrote it for you,” he says. “You are the only one who can play it.”—something she has no intention whatsoever of doing. She takes advantage of the open goal to remind the audience of his absenteeism; “But you’ve never seen me act,” she says. Eventually he hires a much more famous actor, Rachel, played by Elle Fanning, who flatters Gustav at the reception following one of his screenings in France (Gustav is quite used to being the guest of honour). “I don’t know if I’d ever seen a film like it before,” she says. When Rachel arrives at Agnes’s and Nora’s childhood home where the new movie is to be shot, Nora has another panic attack, running through their back garden as the birds sing beautifully, ignoring the melodrama.
As Rachel and Gustav work together on her lines the educational value to the audience picks up. During the first visit to the house, for instance, Gustav tells Rachel (of the final scene in the movie) that “the whole thing is just one shot.” And “we’ll end the shot with her going back in and closing the door.” In a later scene sitting around the family’s kitchen table with a stand-in for a second character, Rachel questions the screenplay; “Who is the ‘you?’” Rachel asks. Gustav has a way of not answering such questions. “Who do you think?” he replies, and then changes the subject; “You pick it up at ‘you have this kind of crisis…’” We see the theatrical process of generating tears on demand and the comforting hugs after a read-through like this. Gustav doesn’t let anyone make decisions for themselves. “It’s hard to be an actress,” he says. “You decide nothing for yourself.” When there is a discussion about a cinematographer, Gustav is clear. “I won’t let anyone else film it,” he says, “other than Peter, who hasn’t shot a film in ten years.” Eventually hanger-on Peter the cameraman appears and he is physically not up to the job, having already accepted it. “When did Peter become so goddamned frail?” Gustav asks later. “Maybe we are too old,” his producer suggests. Peter is an excellent character and the scene where Gustav cuts him loose from the film while drinking neat spirits is excellent.
I should pause to describe the most accomplished shot of the whole movie. In the immediately previous scene, which depicts another row between Nora and her father, Gustav makes the cruel observation that “it’s hard to love someone who is so full of rage.” Then the film segues to a different location. Nora is filmed in a close-up shot breaking down into free-flowing tears at the edge of a bed. The cinematic audience fills the gap; she is upset following this conversation. But then the shot by the bedside pans back and we are in a rehearsal for a scene in a stage play, producers sat behind desks in the foreground.
We return to that first theatre at the end of “Sentimental Value”—it is Nora’s opening night and Gustav is still an absent father—and the choice to do so neatly rounds off the piece, as if a non-fiction story for a periodical. But before we get there, the questions linger. “Can I ask a little more about the character?” Rachel asks. “My big question is why she wants to kill herself.” “That’s the question the film is asking, isn’t it,” Gustav replies. “You’ll have to find your own answer.”
Adam Poole
17th January 2026
If you are interested in viewing this screening, please book your tickets here
