Skarsgard, Stellan

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    If This Movie Wins the Palme d’Or, It Will Extend a Staggering Streak

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    The distributor Neon has been on a run at the Cannes Film Festival, and it has three movies, including “Sentimental Value,” considered front-runners.They sounded froggy. Their eyes were heavy. But underneath all that fatigue, it was clear that the cast and crew of “Sentimental Value” were in good spirits during their Cannes Film Festival news conference on Wednesday.“If my voice is a little rusty, it’s because the film was apparently well-received and we had the party yesterday,” said the co-writer Eskil Vogt.Later, the actor Stellan Skarsgard’s voice also faltered at the news conference. “I was at the same party,” he said apologetically.I, too, had been to that late-night soiree, crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with people eager to celebrate the festival’s biggest hit so far. Earlier that night, “Sentimental Value” received the most supersized standing ovation of Cannes, immediately distinguishing it as one of the strongest contenders to win the Palme d’Or. And if it does take that prestigious trophy, one of the most remarkable streaks in cinema will extend even further.The film’s distributor, Neon, is now angling for its sixth consecutive Palme d’Or, following “Parasite,” “Titane,” “Triangle of Sadness,” “Anatomy of a Fall” and “Anora.” Most insiders believe the Palme could go to “Sentimental Value,” the Iranian drama “It Was Just an Accident” or the Brazilian entry “The Secret Agent,” though Neon also bought the latter two films after they premiered this week, further improving the company’s odds.It may help that the “Sentimental Value” director Joachim Trier has come close to the top prize here before: His previous film, the dramedy “The Worst Person in the World,” won the best-actress award at Cannes for its lead, Renate Reinsve. “Sentimental Value” finds them reteaming for the story of Nora, a Norwegian stage actress who is reluctantly reunited with her estranged father, Gustav (Skarsgard), after her mother’s funeral.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      ‘Andor’ Shows How a Resistance Is Built, One Brick at a Time

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      In the best of the Disney+ “Star Wars” series, returning for its final season, fighting fascism is more than just a joyride.The “Star Wars” movies, TV dramas, animated series and sundry other content-shaped products have shown us some spectacular sights: underwater civilizations, planet-choking cities, mystic swamps, ice worlds and volcanic hellscapes fit to forge a demon.“Andor,” whose second and final season began on Disney+ on Tuesday, has some of that world painting too. But perhaps its most memorable, and certainly its most definitive, physical feature is: bricks.The brick walls on Ferrix — the childhood home planet of the series’s hero, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) — have a somber origin story, revealed in the first-season finale. They are the cremains of the dead, baked into stone and placed into edifices to support those who come after.These bricks are the symbol “Andor” is built out of. Like many “Star Wars” stories, the series is about a battle against a fascistic empire. (In the melee that ends the first season, set at Cassian’s mother’s funeral, her brick is used to clock an imperial soldier in the head.)From a street-level, brick-level perspective, “Andor” shows what resistance means, how it works and what it costs. It emphasizes not just individual heroism but also collective loss and sacrifice. In “Andor,” rebellion is more than a joyride: It is a construction project.A sense of tragedy is built into the series’s premise. “Andor” is a prequel to the 2016 movie “Rogue One,” in which Cassian goes on a fatal mission to retrieve the blueprints for the Death Star, the planet-killer that Luke Skywalker destroyed in the original “Star Wars” (now known as “A New Hope”).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Hope’ Review: In Sickness and in Health

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      In this raw Norwegian drama, a cancer diagnosis forces a longstanding couple to face the fissures in their relationship.For audiences seeking escapism, this may not be the best time to tout a movie about terminal illness. Yet it might help to know that “Hope,” a largely autobiographical drama from the Norwegian writer and director Maria Sodahl, is neither miserabilist nor sappily sentimental. Instead, it’s an almost brutally honest observation of a calcified relationship forced to adjust to a terrifying new reality.Anja (Andrea Braein Hovig) and Tomas (Stellan Skarsgard) have a comfortable Oslo home, six children between them and a two-decade domestic partnership. A talented choreographer, Anja has neglected her career while Tomas, a theater director, has worked and traveled tirelessly. By the time Anja learns that the lung cancer she endured the previous year has metastasized to her brain and is likely incurable, the two have drifted so far apart that the survival of the relationship is as uncertain as her prognosis.“We couldn’t even stick together when times were good,” she reminds Tomas, bitterly. The diagnosis has freed her to speak the unspeakable, her candor leaving Tomas stricken and too often lost for words. But Skarsgard, filling his heavy features with pain and bewilderment, gives the character’s impassivity an unusual eloquence. And as nervy medical appointments alternate with bustling family celebrations (the movie unfolds over Christmas and New Year), the couple’s emotional distance remains a heartbreaking constant.Self-centered without being at all self-serving, Anja’s story has the perfect medium in Hovig, whose huge eyes and mobile mouth draw us in. Raw, melancholy and unquestionably mature, “Hope” understands that some wounds may never be healed. Even so, it takes a brave movie to hold that stance until its very last second.HopeNot rated. In Norwegian, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More