The family home in ‘Sentimental Value’ is a silent character that carries the story

Nominated for nine Academy Awards, Sentimental Value is Norwegian film director Joachim Trier's story of family trauma and grief. Stellan Skarsgård plays Gustav Borg, the estranged father to two daughters, and much of the story unfolds around the family home, a red and black Dragestil (or ‘Dragon Style’) architectural marvel in Oslo that is being emptied following the death of the girls’ mother (the meaning of the title Sentimental Value comes from a scene when the pair are deciding what to keep, confronted with a table full of colourful vases).

Wallpaper* caught up with set designer Jørgen Stangebye Larsen, who talked us through the house's many lives within the film, as its design evolves over several decades.

‘Sentimental Value’ film set: inside the Borg family home

The film opens with the story of 11-year-old Nora Borg, who was assigned to imagine herself as an object for a school essay. As the camera hones in on details of her family home's exterior, a wonderfully, realistically lived-in structure featuring chipped paint, cobwebs, and nature taking over, a narrator reads: 'She knew at once she'd be their house. She described how its belly shook as she and her sister ran downstairs and out the back door. That it saw them take shortcuts through the fence and onto the road, where the house no longer could see them. She wondered if the house liked to be empty and light, or full and heavy. If the floors liked to be trodden on, if the walls were ticklish, if it ever felt pain. And she thought that yes, it probably liked to be full.'

Scenes of ordinary family life – children playing, arguments echoing across the house's floors – play in the background, and we get a glimpse of the 1990s interior’s eclectic composition. Some unmistakable icons come in clear focus, from an ‘Arco’ lamp by Achille Castiglioni for Flos towering over the living room, to a Bruno Mathsson chair, a base for the girls' pretend play.

Throughout the film, glimpses of the family's history are told through the house: Gustav's mother playing in the house in the 1930s, and the family's lives unfolding through the 1940s, 1950s and onwards to the present day, when its interiors are bare, as the house is empty.

The set design is rich with details, which include art, tech that evolves with the times, children's drawings and toys; the camera lingers on interiors to let viewers pause on the spaces, and these scenes are interspersed with shots of light and shadow as the sun enters through the wide windows (Gustav, a film director, is said to have been inspired by the light in his family home growing up).

'The house is outspoken,' says Stangebye Larsen, who worked closely with Trier on how the house would develop with the story.

‘Sentimental Value’: designing a home through history

1930s

Stangebye Larsen and Trier agreed that the house had to feel authentic (it was Trier's first time working on a period film), and that they didn't want to romanticise the time period the action was set in. 'I wanted to find out how this very house looked in Norway and why,' says the designer.

Looking through historical archives led him to discover a plethora of pattern, from the wallpapers to the pillows on the upholstered furniture. 'We spent a lot of time getting to know that period, and for each time, we created a mood that was also period-correct,' observes Stangebye Larsen. 'I was surprised by how visually elaborate it was.'

1950s

A decidedly lighter visual theme carries the house into the 1950s, as young Gustav is seen playing around the airy rooms. The idea of light is evident in these scenes, and it is easy to imagine the effect such interplays of reflections and shadows might have had on a young imaginative mind.

The set becomes visually brighter, with a colour palette veering towards neutrals, with yellow upholstery and pale wood signalling the new family's life in the house.

1960s-1980s

For a period between the 1960s and 1980s, Gustav's aunt occupies the house and the visual vibe shifts: colour and pattern become bolder and the aesthetic more eclectic. Art, a key element throughout the set design's evolution, becomes more prominent and includes prints by Norwegian painter Johannes Rian behind the sofa in the living room, while above the TV is a Gunnar S Gundersen composition.

1990s

In the 1990s, the house reaches its most exciting era, with mixes of furniture, art and objects that feel contemporary yet rooted in its history. 'Gustav moves in with his family, and it's not very natural that they would immediately change the house completely, but I thought they would use the house in a very different way,' explains Stangebye Larsen. A shift in layout is accompanied by a combination of new furniture and objects from the past – a red glass vase that recurs throughout the film, an upholstered lounge chair whose pattern recalls earlier iterations of the interiors.

Now, the house feels like a lived-in interpretation of a modern Scandinavian interior infused with global influences: Alvar Aalto furniture and objects, Marimekko flower-print kitchen towels, a Kartell ‘Bookworm’ bookshelf by Ron Arad, plates from the ‘Blue Fluted Mega’ series from Royal Copenhagen drying on the dish rack, a Poul Henningsen lamp above the dining table.

'I haven't really been aiming for having statement pieces, but I find that kind of furniture so well crafted [with] a lot of interesting shapes, [and] beautiful materials; they add so much to a room,' says Stangebye Larsen.

The interior is crafted like a real Norwegian home, with pieces that Stangebye Larsen himself remembers from his childhood home. The library, office of Gustav's wife, a psychotherapist, features the modular ‘BBB’ shelf system, originally designed in the 1950s by Edvin Helseth for Norway's Eidsvoll Rivefabrikk. 'My mom is a psychologist, we had those shelves in my home,' Stangebye Larsen explains, noting how a lot of his personal history inevitably ends up in the film sets he designs. 'You try to create something real and something you can believe in.'

To keep things very real, several Ikea pieces also make an appearance within the spaces, most notably a ‘Klippan’ sofa, a classic from the Swedish company, here upholstered in brown leather in the family's living room, and the modular ‘Niklas’ shelving units right behind, which Stangebye Larsen also remembers from his childhood bedroom.

Art is once again crucial in this time period, with one piece in particular recurring across shots. It is Samoa Remy's Oscillation between the very far and the very close, a black and white composition that hangs on the therapist's office wall and features a pattern of black and white dots and lines communicating throughout the large-scale tapestry.

Stangebye Larsen did extensive research into psychotherapists' offices and a statement art piece seemed to be de rigueur, so he curated the shelves behind the desk with small sculptures, as well as adding the artwork on the wall as a visual anchor. Working with set decorator Catrine Gormsen to gather the art collection for the house, he landed on Remy's piece: 'I connected to it because it was very simple, and I think it was something with all the dots and all the lines that felt like a collection of people through time, like this family.'

It is impossible not to connect with the interiors, and feel sadness for the home’s fate after the passing of its last Borg resident. Reflecting on this moment, Stangebye Larsen sees the property 'like an archive of all the memories and all the emotions that are stored in the material of the house. And you feel the presence of the past.

'I also lived in [the house] where my mom grew up, and I remember feeling that presence very strongly. And it was a comfort knowing that my grandparents had been there: when I was kind of lonely or feeling sad for some reason, I felt a little bit like they had also probably been here, been sad. Here it's the same, perhaps the story of the house is still there, inside the walls.'

Watch Sentimental Value via Mubi.com