Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1539634
S E N T I M E N T A L VA L U E | P E R S P E C T I V E 4 9 The film begins after Sissel's death, as her daughters host the funeral reception in the family house. Gustav arrives unexpectedly. Later, he offers Nora—now a theatre actress—the lead role in his first film in fifteen years. Still resentful over his absence when she needed him most, she refuses. To her surprise, Gustav secures a famous American actress, Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), for the part. As the legal owner of the house, he moves in temporarily, using it for table reads and preproduction while trying, in his own way, to reenter his daughters' lives. The Sentimental Value universe, with the family house at its heart, branches into the theatre world where Nora works and the academic world where Agnes researches family histories. The sisters have taken different paths: Nora in her acting career living in her more sparse, unfinished apartment; Agnes with a family life in a warm, lived-in home. The main task for the Art Department was the family house, with all its layers through time. Joachim has always insisted on a kind of emotional authenticity in his films. Achieving that is more straightforward in a contemporary setting; recreating the past with the same truthfulness requires research, intuition and restraint. In Sentimental Value, the house has lived through generations—the viewer encounters it across decades through flowing montage sequences that frame the present-day story. My task was to build a narrative of time: to design a space that had been shaped, lived in, changed and passed down. We discussed how to approach period film, by balancing stylistic expression versus realism. Our goal was to remain true to Norwegian domestic life through different eras, while also shaping the design to serve the film's narrative and shifting moods. Because the period sets appear mostly in brief montage shots, the house had to transform extensively during the shoot, often within very short timeframes. Each changeover involved reapplying wallpapers, painting, scenic work, aging and a complete redress. An important early concept came from cinematographer Kasper Tuxen Andersen, who had been experimenting with personal home films where the windows, seen from within the house, seem to "watch" the people coming and going. This gave the house a visual personality—an observer of its own history. In the historic periods, the view through those windows became an essential part of portraying the time. F. 1930S MAIN FLOOR VIEW INTO DINING ROOM. TWINMOTION RENDER. G. 1930S MAIN FLOOR VIEW INTO DINING ROOM. SET PHOTO. H. 2000 MASTER BEDROOM. FILM STILL. F G H