What happens when something so painful passes through generations? What happens when a love that has become sick begins to poison other relationships? Is there a way to heal from disappointments, from unfulfilled desires, from absence? An absence so deep that it corrodes you? What happens when you love someone deeply and hate them at the same time? What happens when the person who brought you into the world, your father or your mother, abandons you in such cruel ways? What do we become with this empty home?
Sentimental Value stood before me like a mirror: a family silently sick, deeply wounded to the point where it falls apart. Absence is something so painful that the lack of words to explain it seems to fit perfectly. There is such an immense need for love in the characters of this film that, at some point, I began to feel deeply nauseated. The pain of absence is so rooted in their gazes that it turned my stomach and held me there until the moment when the tears could no longer be contained: “I want a home. I want a home.”
The monologue about faith in God is brutally honest. There are moments when the pain is so overwhelming that all that remains is to throw myself on the floor and cry, to beg for that home to return, to beg for a home that is not yet mine. Please love me. Please don’t leave me.
What happens when we are willing to ask for forgiveness and to forgive? What happens when we decide to stop staring at such a cruel memory? What happens when we allow the crack to close?
There are not enough answers for so many questions, but after watching this film it becomes impossible not to feel that something new, something beautiful and deeply honest, happens when we are willing to move forward.
