Film Reviews & Movie Analysis

Sisters Nora and Agnes (Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) are drawn back into the orbit of their estranged father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård) — a formerly-revered film director attempting a career comeback. Old wounds reopen when Nora refuses the lead role in her father’s new film forcing the family to confront the internal stories they’ve told to keep themselves whole.

Sentimental Value is a confrontation and a reckoning with the past, with memory, and with the versions of ourselves we’ve edited to survive. It’s a film about fathers and daughters, siblings, artists, and the blossoming and ageing of egos and every character is circling the cracks that led them to this broken point. Despite its weightiness it destroys you with its quiet suffering captured by the cold beauty of Norway. There is so much to pick apart and dissect in this intimate character driven film that you’ll itch to rewatch it as soon as the credits begin to roll.

Director Jaochim Trier collaborates for a second time with Reinsve after The Worst Person in the World (2021). The pair have a relationship that fosters an unhurried space for creativity which flourishes through Reinsve’s physicality. She is simply mesmerising in how she conveys entire emotional shifts through a slight eye roll or a barely-there tightening of the mouth; you’re constantly leaning forward waiting for her to give you these gems, and you can’t get enough.

Like looking into a twisted funhouse mirror, Elle Fanning plays Reinsve’s artistic counterpart and Skarsgård’s familial substitute. She brings international accessibility both within the film and, in a meta sense, outside of it too. That duality folds in on itself, leaving us to question whether the glare of her Hollywood glow is a calculated choice meant to jar — or whether it simply does. Still, the film’s shift between Norwegian and English which often used Fanning as the punchline is handled with Trier’s classic dry humor. There’s also a genuinely lovely moment of mutual respect between the actresses that grounds Fanning’s presence and gives it emotional weight.

Gustav, after all, is a father attempting to make a film from a version of his past he can control, while trying to shape a future — his progeny — that he cannot. There’s something quietly devastating in the fact that his second choice, the recasting of his own daughter, doesn’t work. She doesn’t fit the mould, even in the falsified version of events. The only way Gustav can achieve the authenticity he craves is by owning his failures as a father, emerging on the other side to build something new — something not rooted in a lie.

With its seemingly simplistic narrative you’ll be shocked to find Sentimental Value is the sort of film that burrows deep inside you. It’s a catharsis for the past and a balm for the future handled with profound emotional sentimentality.

What did you think of Sentimental Value? Let me know in the comments below.