Sentimental Value, the latest from writer-director Joachim Trier (The Worst Person in the World, Oslo August 31st), includes a lot of thematic material the filmmaker has dabbled in before (sexual fulfilment, fractured family dynamics, deeply rooted depression), but with just as much poignancy and texture as he always brings to a project.
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At their mother’s memorial ceremony, sisters Nora (Worst Person in the World star Renata Reinsve, Trier’s best performing collaborator) and Agnes (Igna Ibsdotter Lilleaas) are brought back into contact with their estranged/esteemed filmmaker father, Gustav Borg (a never better Stellan Skarsgård). Nora, an purposefully single and anxiety riddled actress, has resented Gustav for years, but married academic and mother Agnes is hoping that dad will give up the home he no longer lives in for her growing family. But Gustav doesn’t want to let the house go so easily, preferring to use it as the setting of his first feature film in fifteen years; a personal passion project that’s a thinly veiled metaphor for his mother and childhood. Gustav wants Nora to star, but she curtly and resoundingly refuses. A chance encounter at a film festival puts Gustav in touch with A-list Hollywood actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), who would love a chance to work with the director in a bid to be taken more seriously.
The relationship between a self-serious father and his skeptical, close, and ideologically opposed daughters takes centre stage throughout Sentimental Value, and it’s territory that Trier knows well. Few filmmakers are better attuned to the messiness of familial and romantic relationships these days, and Trier (alongside frequent co-writer Eskil Vogt) finds ways of ensuring his actors have plenty of material to work from. While Nora and Agnes have different ways of investigating their father’s insistence on making their lives into his latest project (with the former also having a hard time admitting she’s a lot more like dad than she’d like to admit), they do so from a place of conflicted, reasoned affection. And while Gustav has many obvious flaws as a father, partner, human being, and filmmaker, Trier holds the character accountable without passing harsh judgment.
Set to one of Trier’s typically outstanding soundtracks and filmed with an eye for everyday beauty, Sentimental Value examines the things and people we hold dear to us, even when we have a hard time articulating just why we love them in the first place.
Thursday, September 4, 2025 – 9:30 pm – The VISA Screening Room at the Princess of Wales Theatre
