‘Sentimental Value’ Review: Joachim Trier’s Most Mature and Heartfelt Film Yet
In the new film from ‘The Worst Person in the World’ director, a famous Norwegian filmmaker (Stellan Skarsgård) reunites with his estranged daughter (Renate Reinsve), an actress, to ask her to star in his new movie — a deeply personal story inspired by their own family history. When she refuses, he casts a Hollywood star (Elle Fanning) instead, blurring the lines between fiction, memory, and reconciliation.
Somewhere between a traditional family drama and a more layered, self-reflective film about how a house — and several generations of a family — connect across time and through cinema, Sentimental Value stands as the most mature and restrained work yet from the Norwegian filmmaker behind The Worst Person in the World. While it still bears traces of screenwriting-school excess —a few structural flourishes and narrative pivots that show just how much Joachim Trier loves his own craft— this time he manages to keep it all grounded through a tense, complex father-daughter relationship defined by miscommunication, both in life and in art.
Nora Borg (Renate Reinsve) is an actress. Her father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), is a filmmaker. They barely speak; he’s long been estranged from the family and rarely sees Nora or her sister, Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), or his young grandson. When their mother —Gustav’s ex-wife— dies, the old man reappears for the funeral and tells Nora he wants to talk. She doesn’t know what to expect —probably nothing good. She’s just had a panic attack before going onstage for a new play, a meltdown both funny and revealing, and the last thing she needs is another confrontation.
But to her surprise, Gustav —a once-renowned director who hasn’t made a film in 15 years— wants her to star in his next project, a semi-autobiographical story about the life and early suicide of his own mother, Nora’s grandmother. Nora wants no part of it. Their relationship is too strained; he’s never come to see her on stage (he dislikes theater and looks down on the TV shows and films she’s done), and she suspects his sudden interest has more to do with the fact that her recent series was a hit —which, conveniently, makes financing his movie easier.
Amid brief interludes narrated in voiceover about the generations who’ve lived in the family’s old Norwegian estate —handled by Trier with far more grace than Robert Zemeckis achieves in Here— Gustav seems to stumble upon an alternative. At the Deauville Film Festival, where one of his classics is being shown, he meets Hollywood star Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), who’s been captivated by his earlier work. After a long, boozy night on the beach, he offers her the same role Nora turned down. Rachel accepts immediately —and becomes obsessively involved, rehearsing, researching, and digging into the real family story that inspired the film.
Sentimental Value shifts between Nora’s personal life —her plays, her messy romantic relationships, her fraught bond with her father— and, to a lesser extent, Agnes’s work as a historian studying Holocaust torture victims, and Gustav’s renewed creative spark as he and Rachel prepare the film, now backed by Netflix thanks to its new star. At the heart of everything stands the house itself, where Gustav wants to shoot, where the original events took place, and where the characters continue to live out their emotional entanglements in the present. The house isn’t just a setting; it’s a living memory.
Beyond its intricate play between fiction, autofiction, and family mythmaking, Trier’s film is, at its core, about parents and children who can’t communicate. Gustav’s request that Nora play her grandmother is a sideways attempt at reconciliation, a way of reaching out through art since he can’t do it directly. Nora refuses, unwilling to forgive so easily. And while Rachel’s performance is impressive, it’s clear she’s a stand-in for the daughter who should be playing the part, since the story is, in truth, her own.
The film works best when it’s stripped down —when it feels dry, tense, Bergman-like— but it also allows for lighter touches: a few sharp, comic moments (like Gustav’s hilariously inappropriate Christmas gifts to his grandson) and even some genuine laughs (Rachel practicing her “Scandinavian accent” is priceless). Sentimental Value occasionally leans too hard on its symbolism, with a screenplay that tries to tie every emotional thread into a neat bow. The result doesn’t always breathe as freely as it could, but by the time it reaches its conclusion, Trier has earned enough emotional currency to make it land.
Ultimately, Sentimental Value is a tribute to filmmaking and acting as forms of communication — ways for families to express what they can’t say aloud. That gives Trier’s cast moments of pure, luminous performance, especially Fanning, who delivers a long, mesmerizing monologue during one rehearsal scene. Yet the soul of the movie, even when she vanishes for stretches of time, remains Reinsve. With that trademark half-smile hiding “the fear that eats her soul,” Nora stands at a crossroads: deciding whether to hold onto her anger or open the door to reconciliation — in that delicate space where life and cinema start to look like one and the same.
