Rating 7/10
Sentimental Value concerns the emotional baggage people carry and how those lingering feelings keep one family tied together even as they fall apart. Joachim Trier, Danish-born and raised in Norway, has quietly become one of Scandinavia’s most celebrated modern directors. His latest may be his most Bergman-esque to date. Yes, director Ingmar Bergman was Swedish, but they both draw from the same Nordic well of families in crisis. Known for his international breakthrough, The Worst Person in the World, Trier has built a career on intimate stories that balance melancholy with warmth.
Nora (Renate Reinsve) pursues a demanding life as a stage actress, while Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) juggles family stability with her work as a historian. Both sisters have buried years of resentment toward their father (Stellan Skarsgård), who hasn’t been part of their lives for ages. They’re reluctantly pulled back into his orbit when he reappears after their mother’s death. Gustav, now in his 70s, has been absent from filmmaking for so long that his reputation now exists primarily in retrospectives. He arrives with an autobiographical screenplay he believes will restore his faded legacy. His new picture examines his own mother’s tragic past, centering on the torture she endured and the unresolved trauma that still shadows the family’s ancestral home, stretching back to the Nazi occupation of Norway.
Gustav offers Nora the starring role as both a creative olive branch and a deeply personal one. When she refuses, he readjusts and casts Hollywood actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) instead. The production begins to blur uncomfortably with the family’s real history: Rachel alters her appearance to resemble Nora, Agnes digs into the real wartime events behind Gustav’s script, and Gustav begins shaping scenes drawn directly from his daughters’ lives. As filming progresses, personal entanglements arise. The Borgs are forced to face the unresolved emotions they’ve spent years dodging.
There’s an artistic merit to the ways this naturally acted, and impeccably realistic human drama is put together that cannot be denied. I loved the details. The story is dotted with authentic moments, from Nora’s bout of stage fright in the beginning to an amusing scene in which Gustav buys wildly inappropriate DVDs for his grandson. I caught a glimpse of The Piano Teacher. Then there’s the revealing conversation he shares with Rachel on the beach in Deauville, where Gustav opens up to Rachel with a candor he can’t manage with his own daughters.
From one muted beat to the next, it’s a beautifully shot, flawlessly acted work about a family so numb from years of hurt they can barely articulate what they feel anymore. Trier captures the carefully manicured restraint of people who appear composed on the surface while concealing a maelstrom of implicit turmoil beneath. These are passions we rarely see but always sense. It’s all in a furtive glance, an unspoken thought, a subtle gesture that communicates more than words ever could. There is an art to this kind of storytelling, but it does ask a great deal of the viewer. You must fill in the blanks that the director deliberately leaves open.
Ever since its world premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, Sentimental Value has ignited steady Oscar buzz as a serious Best Picture contender along with talk of Tier for Director, Renate Reinsve for Actress, Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas for Supporting Actress, Stellan Skarsgård for Supporting Actor, and Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier for Original Screenplay, not to mention International Feature and even a nod for the brand-new Casting award debuting at the 98th Academy Awards in March 2026. I think the drama is good, but the buzz surrounding it is as loud as the movie itself is quiet. Sure, I greatly admired it, but at an emotional distance. I can’t say it held enough “sentimental value” to get me to shed a tear.