Sentimental

EXCLUSIVE: Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas is the quiet sister, Agnes, opposite Renate Reinsve’s louder, more histrionic older sibling Nora in Joachim Trier’s unbelievably brilliant Cannes Grand Prix winner Sentimental Value. “Agnes is the diplomat of the family,” Lilleaas tells us, “trying to keep everyone together in the family.”

Trier didn’t know much about Lilleaas before he decided to cast her as Agnes, an academic historian who lives with her husband and son in the spacious house in Oslo where she was raised with Nora and their late mother.

Their father Gustov Borg, played with a sort of wounded gusto by Stellan Skarsgård, is a once-famous film director who abandoned his family when he made the choice to concentrate on his career.

Sometimes, when I watch movies, my eye is drawn to the quiet character to the left of the frame; they’re just slightly out of the main action. But their stillness compels you to pay attention. That’s what happened when I first saw Lilleaas in Sentimental Value.

Lilleaas comes from a theater background. Her parents ran a theater production company that made sets and costumes. They also went out on the road, putting on shows in the towns and villages surrounding the little mountainside village they lived in at Goc located in Hallingdal Valley in Buskerud County, situated between Oslo and Bergen in Norway.

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At the age of 2, her parents cast her in an historical play about a woman who’s beheaded because she had an abortion.

“They thought she killed her baby,” Lilleaas explains.

“I was very little. And I’ve been told that on the day of the premiere I threw a tantrum and said, ‘I don’t want to do it anymore.’ So that’s sort of the beginning for me,” Lilleaas says.

Trier says he met with many actors for Agnes. “And she’s extraordinary,” he says. “And I like actors that sometimes don’t jump up and do the jazz hands.

“Renate can f*cking do that. She’s funny,” he adds. “And she could do levity and all that. So I love that in her, the spectrum of Renate. But I needed someone opposite her who could hold that silence, and that took a bit of work. We had to do a couple of casting sessions, and suddenly I saw it in Inga, who is remarkable and she gives herself to the camera. Her closeups are extraordinary — cinematic as hell.”

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Lilleaas and I meet for a cuppa tea in a private dining room toward the rear of the New Sheridan Hotel along Telluride’s main boulevard. I’d seen her before, at the film’s now-famous 19-minute world premiere ovation during Cannes and at a party. Then up in the mountains, Skarsgård introduced us at the annual brunch for Telluride’s festival patrons.

They hadn’t sought the busier area. Instead she and Skarsgård stood with their backs to it all. They weren’t being stand-offish, not at all. They just weren’t seeking the limelight. By the way, their fellow stars Reinsve and Elle Fanning were standing out of the spotlight too. The sight of them all made me smile.

Following her tantrum at 2 years old, it was at high school that Lilleaas decided that she wanted to get into the theater program, and that was “the first time I can remember actually thinking about wanting to be an actor. And before that it was just a feeling I had. … I liked doing theater. And then I applied to these theater schools, and that’s sort of when I understood that maybe I could be an actress,” she says as we sip our hot drinks.

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She hadn’t fully comprehended that “actually there was a job that people had that was just being an actor, not making the theater, which was what I had seen my parents do, doing the whole thing from the construction and all the work that goes into it.”

Although she loved the “whole process” of making theater, there was a determination to focus on the thespian part of it.

As a big fan of Julia Roberts, Pretty Woman and Steel Magnolias played on repeat. “And I just thought she was so beautiful and a really good actress. So I remember her from when I was young. I remember seeing Erin Brockovich in the cinema actually, and I was so blown away by that movie and by her,” Lilleaas says. 

Equally, she got a kick out of just seeing the kids in high school who were in her parents’ classes. “I went to see their shows, and we went to Oslo to see productions. … And they would go on field trips with the class, and I would come with them twice a year maybe. But what I grew up with is the amateur theater and seeing the high school kids perform. So that’s what I grew up identifying with and wanting to be. So I didn’t really go outside for inspiration. It was sort of there on my doorstep,” she says.

“And when I look back at it, for me as a kid, they were amazing. They probably maybe weren’t that amazing, but I felt that it was amazing what they were doing. And then I grew up and there was a lot of very good Norwegian actors to look up to.”

Her favourite then was Ane Dahl Torp (The Wave, Cold Lunch), but there were many others she followed.

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At 17, she was an education exchange and went to live in Brazil  and went to a normal high school with Brazilian kids and gradually learned Portuguese for a year.

Her local-language skills were helped along by watching “the telenovelas, like our soap operas.” She remembers seeing telenovelas such as Tropical Paradise and Once in a Blue Moon. The common factor being, both featured Wagner Moura, the Cannes Film Festival Best Actor star of Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent.

“I saw him, he taught me Portuguese in a way,” Lilleaas says brightly. “Because I watched him and other actors, of course, in the telenovelas, and I remember him so well because he was so good.”

And just hours after hearing that story, there they were, hanging out with the Sentimental Value and The Secret Agent teams at the Neon party. 

I ask Lilleaas about her preparations for taking on the role of Agnes in Trier’s movie. 

“We had a lot a rehearsal. I’ve never done that before to that extent. But we went through every scene that I was in and with the other actors and we blocked it and we had a really thorough talk about it. And so when we came to set, we had had a plan, sort of, that we could follow or not. So it wasn’t like, ‘This is how we’re going to do it,’ but it wasn’t set in stone.”

Trier’s pre-production runthrough of the screenplay gave her confidence. “We’ve been through this. So we’ve tried it out,” Lilleaas says. “We know a little bit about what it’s like. And in Norway, there’s not a lot of money for rehearsals.“

And then “when you do it again, you get deeper into it. I think it’s not just the first read of the thing. So you can actually dig deeper. And you have sort of a memory of what the other actor did.“

They shot in a studio and at various locations including the family home that’s at the center of the film’s drama. It’s a dramatic structure located in Oslo’s posh west end of the city.

Lilleaas knew Reinsve a little because they’d worked together with a  small theater company that Reinsve had started. They worked summer seasons on theater projects with children who are home and don’t go on vacation.

Then Trier brought them together for Sentimental Value. The two actors rehearsed together, and Lilleaas had a feeling of, “How was this dynamic going to be?”

“We had talks about family and sisterhood and stuff like that,” says Lilleaas, who has an older sister and a younger brother. “I’m in the middle,” she says, laughing.

“It’s great. I mean, I know a little bit of what it’s like to be a younger sister, and I know what it’s like to be a bigger sister and how that’s different, how the dynamic is different and the responsibility is different. When you’re someone’s younger sister, like I am in the movie, you’re protected in a way, and there’s someone who’s always been there. You’re not the first, you’re not the test [child],” she says.

“And when you’re an older sister, at least for me, there’s this enormous responsibility to protect the younger one that I don’t feel with my older sister. They’re so much more relaxed, which is probably annoying for her that you can just walk through life with the feeling of no responsibility.”

I point out that in the film, Agnes, although younger, is the grownup.

“But I think at some point it shifted in their relationship because when there were children, Nora, the older sister, protected the younger sister and took care of her and was her steady rock.” She feels that affected Nora “in a way that broke her a little bit. And it affected her, as you see in the movie. And so at some point, the healthier one becomes the protector in adulthood. … A lot of people can relate to that and recognize that. … And that’s because of the sort of older sibling sacrifice in a way, or her taking the fall, I guess. … That makes the younger one able to be the protector because maybe they’re more secure.”

But, in her view, it doesn’t mean that the younger — and, in this instance, stronger — sister, is not “affected by the childhood.”

Agnes has her scars, only they’re not immediately as visible as Nora’s.

“When we worked on it, I think that Agnes has a relationship with her father. He’s not absent from her life, but he’s not there. So she can call him, but he’s not involved that much,” she says.

As a child, Agnes and her father were close — after all, he chose her to play a role in one of his films.

And then he disappeared into editing and into probably traveling with the film. “And he was gone. And for a child, that must be so devastating and it must make you feel that you were used by your parents somehow. You don’t necessarily understand then. But I imagine that that’s the feeling that you were sort of taken advantage of in a way.

“I can only imagine, being an actor, how much you give of your inner self and how much that costs. And for someone just to take it and leave, it’s hard enough when it’s someone you don’t really know. But when it’s your own father, it must really make you confused to put it lightly,” she says.

I think I understand why actors act and how they can pour themselves into a role. Yet I feel that they’re not always appreciated for what they put into it, I say.

“I think if you turn on your empathy a little and think about it, what you’re actually doing is you’re putting the most vulnerable part of yourself for everyone to see and enjoy,” Lilleaas says. But, she warns: “That does cost something for people. And I think there’s a lot of judgment against actors.”

I suggest that,in part, it’s based on the ever-ready diet of celebrity coverage that dominates the media. Everything is showbiz. The president of the United States treats the White House like some mammoth soundstage where he can treat foreign leaders as if they’re the stooges on a television game show.

And then there’s the assumption that every actor must have stacks of money and that everything is done for them.

“And I think people look at that and they want that,” Lilleaas says. “So maybe there’s a little jealousy in there that you want that, but you don’t know what you’re paying to get that.”

Most actors, she says, “aren’t famous. They’re very hardworking, normal people.”

I was in the Grand Lumiere in Cannes when Sentimental Value was greeted with that extraordinary 19-minute ovation. 

How did she feel being in that rare moment, I ask.

“It was overwhelming, of course. We’d just seen the movie, which was nice. I had seen it once before, in a smaller theater. So this was huge. And there were a lot of people, and it was so nice to hear people react and you can feel the energy in the room. … And this feels good. And then they applaud. And I was prepared that if they like it, they’ll applaud. And thought, ‘Maybe it’ll last a little,’ but I didn’t know what was long and what was short. You don’t know what six minutes is. You don’t know what 19 minutes is. So I just sort of dissociate a little because you’re filmed at the same time,” she recalls with a delayed looked of shock on her face.

I confess to her that I was one of those from the media who filmed her. Although, I must say that my iPhone is nowhere near as big as the official cameras that Thierry Frémaux escorted into the auditorium to film the ovation. 

“I had tears in my eyes because I thought it was just great and a little overwhelming, of course. And I was moved by the movie,” she says. “I was moved by people’s reaction to the movie. And when you look people in the eye after they’ve seen it, there’s this connection that we know we’ve experienced something together and that we have this understanding of our pain, each other’s pain, without having to say it because we’ve seen the movie and it sort of describes it. And so now we know each other.”

It’s a bond made between people watching a big screen in the dark, she remarks. “I think that’s so powerful to experience, and that makes me cry a little.”

I remember feeling that the Sentimental Value screening was a seminal night for cinema. But the irony of it was that this was a film about acting, about the film industry and the destruction that it can cause to the people who toil in it .And it was taking place in this cathedral of cinema.

“And it was very huge for me to just be there,” Lilleaas says. “I felt so privileged and I felt like it was a dream to be there. And how much respect people have for movies there. That’s very moving.”

But what did she think of the whole the Cannes red carpet — the gowns, the jewelry, the shoes, and all that palava?

Reading my question back, I realize how sexist it is. I guess I wouldn’t have asked Denzel Washington about the color of his tuxedo or his ear stud.

I chastise myself, wishing that I could take it back. 

However, Lilleaas responded that she thought the whole red carpet panoply “was a lot,” especially when that kind of exhibitionism “is so far from the core of the movie.”

Nonetheless, she thought the glam fest was “fun” and that she “likes to dress up” but suggests that she found it “a little overwhelming as well.”

As we’re talking, Lilleaas suddenly looks up with a start. There’s a trophy head of a buffalo known as “Old Joe,” as the brass plaque reveals, mounted on a dining room wall. “It’s garish,” Lilleaas cries.

We’d been so deep into our conversation that neither one of us had noticed the darn buffalo staring right down at us.

Not much call for buffalo in Oslo. She and actor husband Gunnar Eiriksson (Pørni, Power Play) reside there with their 4-year-old son. ”It’s a very chill, everyday life with my family,” she allows.

She went straight home from Cannes and into the routine of picking up her child at kindergarten. “It’s very quick to get back to reality from that unreal setting to somewhere close to normal life. That’s life as life. That’s what’s important to me. And that’s what has value. And the other stuff is fun and a little crazy, but it not real life,” she observes.

Lilleaas agrees that you can’t act real life on stage or screen if you don’t ever experience it as a normal person.

That’s why she believes that “a lot of actors should have other jobs in their life. They need to know what it’s like to have a job that’s not acting and to work with other people who are not actors. Because you can’t spend your whole career life working with the same type of people, we’re very similar often. And to just do the acting, then you don’t actually know what you’re talking about somehow, I think.”

Lilleaas has practiced what she preaches. She has worked in the costume department of her parents’ business. Her first main job was as a dental assistant. “I was super unqualified for the work — I was 17,” she reveals.

That was followed by a stint as a teacher and helping out in a care home for senior citizens.

That last gig must’ve been helpful in her understanding of Agnes’ father, played by Skarsgård.

I’d seen them in Cannes at the Closing Night party, and I liked how he often seemed to be protective of her in a kindly, fatherly way. Same in Telluride. This world was new to Lilleaas, and she appreciated that he was “so sweet to her.”

And, she adds, “He’s so down to earth and so warm and empathetic, and he’s such a good actor.” 

Working with him on Sentimental Value, she says that “when you just look in his eyes, you see his soul, you can feel his presence, and I can see something in there. I don’t know what it is, but it resonates with me. And so I react to that intuitively, which was so much fun and so interesting and rewarding as an actor to work with him. Yeah,and he’s very nice.”

Her Agnes in Sentimental Value, she notes, “is not in the darkest place throughout the movie. So for me it was very light and happy to go to work. And I really like feeling things at work. So it was a lot of fun. We had a great time.”

Future work, Lilleaas says, is “a little up in the air” while she helps promote Sentimental Value through the fall and winter. Following TIFF, the picture screens on four dates at the New York Film Festival beginning with a gala on September 30 at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. It’s screening three times at the BFI London Film Festival, premiering there on October 12 at the Royal Festival Hall. It’s released into theaters in the US and UK on November 7.

The world of the stage remains in her blood. Before and after filming Sentimental Value she stood in for her uncle, a teacher at a drama school in Oslo, where she taught 19-year-old students for half a semester.

She found the experience refreshing. “I love being a teacher,” she enthuses. “It’s like acting, teaching. I’ve done it before as well. And I learned so much about acting from it because I have to try to explain myself. And I think it’s really interesting and it’s so much fun to see younger people experience themselves in doing that. And to see them grow as people mostly, not so much the acting part, it’s more the human being growing up and taking that step into adulthood. I think it’s such a privilege to be a witness to.”

It’s also a privilege for me as well, to watch a new star get ready to soar.