An out-of-touch film director. His daughters, a stage actress and an academic who are still dealing with the ramifications of their father’s frequent absence. An American actress looking for her next big project. Combined, these characters make up the deeply funny and emotionally charged cast of Sentimental Value, Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s latest foray into familial trauma. Stellan Skarsgård is Gustav Borg, who has just re-entered his daughters Nora and Agnes’ lives with an offer for Nora to star in a deeply personal film he wrote. Elle Fanning plays Rachel Kemp, the American actress who takes the role after Nora turns it down, and she tries to immerse herself in the Borg family’s complex dynamics as best she can for the role.
Renate Reinsve, a frequent collaborator of Trier, plays Nora with a paper thin composure and often apoplectic rage barely contained beneath a quivering lip. Dealing with crippling stage-anxiety and a constant feeling of aimlessness, Nora butts heads with her father frequently upon his return. Agnes, played by Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, on the other hand rarely challenges Gustav on anything, despite also clearly being affected by his actions. The dynamic between the sisters is one of the film’s most compelling elements, it is full of tension and conflict but also love, adoration and comfort. Sentimental Value is a very Scandinavian movie, not just in its characters and setting, but its wickedly funny jokes in scenes that could easily make you cry. It balances humour and sadness perfectly, capturing such melancholy in a sharp and touching script.
Sentimental Value, 2025. Directed by Joachim Trier.
Sentimental Value holds an almost prophetic commentary about the grim modernisation of the film industry due to streaming services and greedy studios. As Gustav is struggling to find funding for his film, he resorts to Netflix to produce his story, who may treat the film with far less reverence or care than it demands. After news of Netflix acquiring Warner Brothers, many cinema-goers are worried about the future of theatrical film distribution, or lack thereof, and Sentimental Value offhandedly displays perfectly how too often studios see important artistic endeavours as numbers on spreadsheets and money in executives’ pockets.
Trier is a master of framing, characters placed between lines separating them from the rest of the scene, or in a mirror’s reflection disconnecting them from the audience. The camera work and performances combined make Sentimental Value hard to not find oneself immersed in. Among many other awards, Sentimental Value won the Grand Prix prize at the Cannes Film Festival, a prestigious award second only at the festival to the legendary Palme d’Or. Sentimental Value was eyed as a strong entry into the 2025 cinematic calendar and it follows through on that potential tenfold. 2025 is a year full of incredible films, with both vast scale and small character studies, and it takes a different kind of talent to take a smaller story and make it seem like the most important thing in the world. I can’t make any promises regarding Oscar nominations or wins, but it would be outright criminal for Trier, Skarsgård or Reinsve to not walk away with anything.
Sentimental Value is playing at Perth Festival from the 8th to the 14th of December.