Sentimental Value Review: Dad’s Girls on Film

Joachim Trier delivers another portrait of modern familial angst with honesty and self-awareness in Cannes highlight Sentimental Value.

By the time Joachim Trier’s film arrived to the Croisette, every critic, industry rep and unpaid intern had spent the previous nine days fretting over ticket shortages, exhausting themselves to make room in their sleep-deprived schedule for more writing, and worrying they’re not good enough to be here because they missed a deadline. In that context, Sentimental Value is a soothing balm. Amongst its line-up of selfish parents and messed-up children lies a wide spectrum of identifiable self-loathing. The actions of its central family unit reflected the woes of everyone who saw it in the screening rooms of the Palais, and Sentimental Value will continue to be a mirror to audiences when it goes on wider release later this year.

Like fellow Palme d’Or contender Sound of Falling, Sentimental Value revolves around a house. It’s the old Borg family home, a wooden suburban home whose charming painted façades would sit just as nicely in a wood as in the outskirts of Oslo. The fractured family dynamics of actress Nora (Renate Reinsve), her historian younger sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), and their estranged father Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård) will ring true across oceans. The sisters have supported each other through thick and thin, but their bond and their patience are about to be tested. Their (unseen) mother has just passed away; funerals are wont to bring unwanted family members out of the woodwork, and few are as unwanted as their barely present father.

Skarsgård has spent his career fighting his warm blond looks to play all manner of abrasive men. From gruff authoritarians (Chernobyl) to manipulative working men (Breaking The Waves, Insomnia) to blockbuster grotesques (Dune, Pirates of the Caribbean), he’s almost always as unpleasant in character as he is approachable in countenance. Like anyone, he’ll be as goofy as you like for a paycheque (Mamma Mia!), but Sentimental Value concentrates all his facets to maximum effect. His Gustav is a revered film director, but he’s feeling age creep up on him as his best work goes further and further into the past. However, he’s not resigned to gathering dust on the shelves of the arthouse section. 

Gustav has a new script, and he needs an actress to play his female lead. The only problem is that the perfect performer is the one person he’s scarcely talked to in years. We meet Reinsve’s Nora on opening night of her new play, hyperventilating and practically tearing her elaborate dress off as the curtain’s about to go up. Every character in Sentimental Value has a doubt or anxiety gnawing at them, but, as so often happens in life, the solution to these problems lies in the difficult conversations with the people to whom we don’t want to talk.

Such dynamics are nothing new to Trier. The Norwegian writer-director has positioned himself as a near-transcendental chronicler of middle class malaise and dysfunction. Despite setting most of his films in Norway (His underrated English language feature Louder Than Bombs being the exception), his preoccupations with professional frustration, relationship strife, and the depression that can often accompany these sensations are applicable in most countries and contexts. His films are often described as impressionistic, but the sense of fragmentation that comes with that tag never manifests. The production values are always elegant but never ostentatious, and the various storylines that emerge at the beginning are woven into the tapestry of the film with stealthy skill by the end. Happily, Sentimental Value is very much in keeping with that trend.

Father and daughter agree to meet to allow Gustav to offer Nora the role of a lifetime, but such an offer can’t make up for the years of estrangement, and the screaming matches between Gustav and his now-late wife for years before that. His plans for he and his family haven’t panned out; he imagined Agnes would be the actress instead of Nora, but his distance from her means he can’t see the effects of his resent. After her breakout performance in Trier’s The Worst Person in the World, Reinsve delivers another sublime turn, ferocious in her stage presence, but barely held together when confronted with reality. Her fortitude is sorely tested when Gustav presses on with the project anyway, and recruits an American starlet in the lead role instead. 

Enter Elle Fanning as Rachel, a well-meaning actress who wants to impress the acclaimed auteur director and improve her standing as a performer. Fanning’s casting purposefully sticks out, her American twang contrasting sharply with the softer Scandinavian tones of her co-stars. She is playing Nora’s role, but she can’t be Nora, no matter how much she practises her Norwegian accent. Fanning trusts Trier to use her presence wisely and, despite her purpose as a contrast to Reinsve’s Nora, she delivers a remarkable supporting performance. A rehearsal scene recalls Naomi Watts submitting to the script in her infamous audition in Mulholland Drive.

The character of Rachel and the development of Gustav’s project allow Trier to poke at his own experience as a filmmaker. He’s achieved considerable success, but the compromises and sidesteps he’s had to make to get to this point are borne out in Gustav’s negotiations with studios and talent alike. There are snide asides aimed at Netflix, and Gustav rolls his eyes at having to engage with Rachel’s sycophantic entourage. Trier will find many sympathizers among the Cannes crowd for these woes, with handlers and financiers guarding the access, the money and the ability to get directorial visions realized. Changes in casting, setting and language make sense to higher-ups but, as Trier and Sentimental Value prove, real artistry translates.

As Gustav agonizes over his film, and Nora finds herself succumbing to her anxieties, it’s up to the third part of this familial trio to keep it together. Lilleaas’ role as the younger daughter is the least showy of the main characters, but she radiates a quiet warmth, particularly in the third act.  She continues to support her older sister, while defending her own young son from Gustav’s attempts to cast him in his movie. She played a part for him once before, but she refuses to let the same mistakes be made again.

Sentimental Value is a film about the impossible human need to correct the past. Gustav’s film is based around the experiences of his own mother, a WWII resistance fighter who took her own life when Gustav was still young. The director is so preoccupied by the past that he can’t see that he can fix the present. From the intensity of rehearsals to quieter moments with friends and whiskey, Skarsgård is utterly magnetic. His rascally twinkle and gravelly vocality convey Gustav’s angst, anger and energy simultaneously, and especially when working off Reinsve and Lilleaas.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Sentimental Value is how unsentimental it is. Yes, it has emotional depth in spades, but it never feels mawkish or cheap. It takes its time to earn its payoffs, giving the characters only ever what they need before they decide what they want. Sentimental Value is a masterclass in cinematic grace and honesty, played to perfection.

Sentimental Value premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 21, 2025 in competition and will be screened again on May 23.