Sentimental Value
**“There’s one major difference in the way we grew up. “
“I had you.”**In a grand, lively house, there’s a crack that could make the house crumble at any second.
Going into this movie, I never thought it’d make me feel this amount of emotion, yet I find myself writing these words with its brilliance still vivid in my brain.
The safety of a sister is the only home you truly need to survive. This movie is not the story of Nora and her father, nor about filmmaking entirely, but truly about how the familiarity of growing up in the same environment can yield a love that can never be untended. It’s not love that’s embodied in personhood, but in the bond that keeps growing strong as life strikes its anger upon them. This movie is a constellation of a family dynamic that still has the chance to heal, while there’s hope, love, and the desire to get better.
Nora is a talented actress, yet she still finds herself performing on the same stage day after day, not because she’s not good enough to be put on the big screen, but because of the safety and predictability of the stage that she has gotten used to. There are no cracks that can break at any second.
Her relationship with Jakob, her fear of fully being able to surrender to him, and the fact that she chose to stay with him partially because he was married and she wouldn’t have to confront him, say many of the unsaid things about her character.
The absence of a seemingly absent father, the eyes that keep watching without looking, and the never-answered question of
“do you really know who I am?“
The shared cigarettes in silence because they can’t really talk to one another. He knows her. He sees her. She’s his daughter; he’s her dad.
His anger and his humor and his abandonment. she’s more like him than she can ever grasp.
Her relationship with her sister Agnes, I have never seen such a raw presentation of sisterhood as this. It didn’t feel forced. They kept checking on each other almost imperceptibly, with a glance, a hand brush, a phone call. They felt through each other, through the bond they shared, and they understood each other without having to say a thing.
Nora only accepted the role after Agnes presented it to her.
*Nora took the vase because Agnes wanted it first.
That’s its sentimental value for her.*
Having only one sister, whom I really have the safety of my life wrapped around her arms like a tightrope, we got through because of each other, because she was there for me, and because I was there for her. Because we saw each other and heard each other when words couldn’t do. I write this truly for her and for the love I have for her.
**“There’s one thing that made me go through it when we grew up.”
“I had you.”*My sister once said to me.*