Justin Chang

Her character has a bracing and very American directness that cuts through all the wry Nordic reserve.

Trier clearly respects the audience's intelligence, which earns our respect in return.

But for every sensitive, perceptive moment in sentimental value, there's another that feels coy, even complacent.

Trier and his regular co-writer, Esquivote, seem strangely incurious about their character's art.

I wanted to see more of Nora's acting, and to hear more of Gustav's script.

In lieu of this, the movie floats a lot of whispery notions about how art and life converge.

Even when artists turn out to be lousy parents, it suggests, art itself can be a vessel for reconciliation and healing.

This idea is not exactly the stuff of Revelation, and the movie basically rubber-stamps it without developing or dramatizing it anew.

A big part of the story involves the beloved family house where Nora and Agnes grew up, and which Gustav wants to use as the shooting location for his new film.

We're meant to see that our homes become repositories of memory, filled with the ghosts of generations past.

But there's something a little precious about these themes, just as there's something pat and predictable about the way the drama resolves.

In building toward a redemptive ending, sentimental value lets everyone off the hook too easily, especially Gustav.

You can't blame Skarsgård, who plays the role with his typically irresistible, irascible charm.

But it's hard not to feel that Trier, in indulging this character, is favoring the priorities of art over the tougher questions of life.

As an admirer of the Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, it gave me no pleasure to report that his 2024 film, Kinds of Kindness, was all kinds of lousy.

A trio of stories about human cruelty, each one more wearying than the last.

You couldn't fault the actors, though.

Not Emma Stone, a brilliant Lanthimos regular who won an Oscar for her role in his film Poor Things.

And not Jesse Plemons, a versatile addition to the director's regular company.

Now Stone and Plemons have reunited in Lanthimos' wickedly funny new psychological thriller, Begonia, which at times plays like a discarded fourth story from Kinds of Kindness that was expanded into its own feature.