Noth­ing brings a fam­i­ly togeth­er like a funer­al, and at the wake for Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes’ (Inga Ibs­dot­ter Lil­leaas) moth­er, their estranged father Gus­tav (Stel­lan Skars­gård) strolls through the door as though noth­ing has changed. His reap­pear­ance in his daugh­ters’ lived threat­ens to dis­turb the ten­ta­tive peace they both have, par­tic­u­lar­ly for Nora, a flighty actress suf­fer­ing from a cri­sis of con­fi­dence. To make mat­ters worse, the long-in-the-tooth film­mak­er has a new project in mind, and would like his eldest daugh­ter to star in it, despite Nora’s increduli­ty at her father’s return as though no time has passed at all.

Joachim Trier’s sec­ond col­lab­o­ra­tion with Renate Reinsve has a tough act to fol­low in The Worst Per­son in the World, which made a star of his muse and brought him to glob­al atten­tion through a star­ry release via Neon and MUBI. He returns to the ground­ed inter­per­son­al dynam­ics which occu­py his cin­e­ma, and in Sen­ti­men­tal Val­ue​‘s touch­ing open­ing, the nar­ra­tion recalls an essay Nora wrote as a child from the per­spec­tive of their fam­i­ly home, reflect­ing on its his­to­ry and the dis­in­te­gra­tion of their fam­i­ly. In a wry Tri­erism, the nar­ra­tor reveals that Nora redis­cov­ered the essay while look­ing for a piece to read for her dra­ma school audi­tion, ​“But chose Nina’s mono­logue from ​‘The Seag­ull’ instead.”

Nora, Nina – the sim­i­lar­i­ties go deep­er than the name, both actress­es with a per­va­sive melan­choly, though Nora doesn’t seem to share Nina’s desire for fame at any cost. When we meet her as an adult, she’s actu­al­ly attempt­ing to flee from the the­atre she’s due to per­form in, beset by an anx­i­ety attack, to the frus­tra­tion of the staff who have to tape her into her cos­tume when she rips it in a pan­ic. She couldn’t be more dif­fer­ent from Rachel Kemp (Elle Fan­ning), the famous Amer­i­can movie star who con­nects with her father at a film fes­ti­val and ends up tak­ing the part in his film that Nora didn’t want. Rachel is young and sparky, hun­gry and stu­dious. For her, act­ing is the art of solv­ing mys­ter­ies; for Nora it seems more vital, allow­ing her to become some­one else. In her day-to-day she con­tin­u­al­ly bat­tles a sad­ness of which she can’t quite find the root; a par­al­lel is drawn between Nora and her pater­nal grand­moth­er, who died by sui­cide 15 years after being released from a prison camp for anti-Nazi activ­i­ties, and whose absence had a pro­found impact on Nora’s father.

Sen­ti­men­tal Val­ue is mov­ing in moments, and Tri­er and co-writer Eskil Vogt’s dia­logue is as sharp and quick-wit­ted as ever (a gag about the DVDs Gus­tav gifts his nine-year-old grand­son for his birth­day brought the house down in the Cannes press screen­ing) but the film falls short of the great­ness achieved in The Worst Per­son in the World or Oslo 31^st August, which cov­ered sim­i­lar ground with more emo­tion­al depth. While the depic­tion of the strong bond between Nora and Agnes formed out of their par­ents’ dif­fi­cult mar­riage is touch­ing, the story’s con­clu­sion seems sign­post­ed from the begin­ning, and it oper­ates at the same emo­tion­al pitch through­out, with­hold­ing infor­ma­tion to the point that it feels like the char­ac­ters are being delib­er­ate­ly kept at a frus­trat­ing dis­tance. But Skars­gård is the best he’s been in years as a father fun­da­men­tal­ly unable to artic­u­late him­self in any way oth­er than his work, and obliv­i­ous as to why his daugh­ters feel such frus­tra­tion with him for a life­time of dis­tance, and there’s keen wis­dom in Sen­ti­men­tal Value’s obser­va­tion of the gulf between who our par­ents are and who we wish they were.

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When 94-year-old Eleanor’s (June Squibb) best friend of 70 years and room­mate Bessie (Rita Zohar) pass­es away, she decides it’s time for a change, and moves back to her native New York. In an attempt to get her out of the house and social­is­ing, her daugh­ter Lisa encour­ages Eleanor to attend class­es at their local Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, where she acci­den­tal­ly sits in on a group for Holo­caust sur­vivors. When they ask her to share her sto­ry, Eleanor (who is not a Holo­caust sur­vivor) pan­ics, and recounts Pol­ish-born Bessie’s sto­ry instead. She’s approached by jour­nal­ism stu­dent Nina (Erin Kel­li­man), who wants to pro­file her for a class project: chaos ensues.

The prob­lem with the premise of Scar­lett Johansson’s direc­to­r­i­al debut, Eleanor the Great, is that the sto­ry can ulti­mate­ly only end one way. From the sec­ond Eleanor tells her lie we know that she’s going to get found out (because this is a gen­tle com­e­dy dra­ma) and so it’s down to Tory Kamen’s script to pro­vide enough enter­tain­ment that the jour­ney to this inevitable des­ti­na­tion that it doesn’t feel like a slog. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the writ­ing in Eleanor the Great is less than stel­lar, with char­ac­ter paint­ed in broad strokes (Eleanor’s dis­in­ter­est­ed daugh­ter and grand­son; Nina’s worka­holic father) and pre­cious lit­tle done to breathe new life into the fish-out-of-water nar­ra­tive. The reli­ably charm­ing June Squibb does her best, but Eleanor isn’t a very inter­est­ing char­ac­ter, par­tial­ly because we don’t real­ly learn much about her beyond her grief regard­ing her friend Bessie’s death. Sim­i­lar­ly, Kel­li­man does her best to inject per­son­al­i­ty into Nina, but there’s very lit­tle to hold our inter­est, and Johans­son doesn’t prove her­self a par­tic­u­lar­ly tal­ent­ed direc­tor of per­for­mances. In fact, as the film goes on, it feels like Eleanor has less and less per­son­al­i­ty, hol­lowed out from the snarky, spiky old bid­dy we meet at the begin­ning of the film.

Sim­i­lar­ly dis­ap­point­ing is the look and feel of Eleanor the Great, which isn’t for a lack of tal­ent. Alice Rohrwach­er and Claire Denis’ reg­u­lar DoP Hélène Lou­vart shot the film, but it has all the per­son­al­i­ty of a New York tourism board advert, and Dustin O’Halloran’s score is sim­i­lar­ly devoid of per­son­al­i­ty. The images with­in the film are too gen­er­al and famil­iar – there is noth­ing new about what Johans­son is attempt­ing in her direc­to­r­i­al debut, which leads one to won­der why she both­ered mak­ing it at all. It’s not a dis­as­trous film – in fact, it’s quite inof­fen­sive. But this glar­ing nice­ness reflects a cru­cial lack of ambi­tion, and that seems more egre­gious than tak­ing a big swing. In a Cannes year that also brought us direc­to­r­i­al debuts from Kris­ten Stew­art and Har­ris Dick­in­son, it’s safe to say that Johans­son, while the most expe­ri­enced actor of the group, achieves the least with her leap to filmmaking.

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