‘Sentimental Value’ review: Renate Reinsve and Joachim Trier reunite for moving family drama

Dir: Joachim Trier. Norway/France/Denmark/Germany. 2025. 135mins

An actress daughter and her director father discover their household roles in Sentimental Worth, the delicate sixth function from Norway’s director Joachim Trier. On its floor, the movie could contact on the acquainted theme of how artists draw from their very own lives, however Renate Reinsve and Stellan Skarsgard carry unimaginable tenderness to a narrative that’s in the end about what kids and fogeys by no means say to 1 one other — and whether or not these lifelong silences can ever be damaged.

Renate Reinsve and Stellan Skarsgard carry unimaginable tenderness to the story

That is Trier’s third image to display screen in Cannes Competitors, after 2021’s The Worst Individual In The World’s breakout lead Reinsve gained Greatest Actress. The reunion of director and star will entice arthouse crowds, and Sentimental Worth already has an August launch date deliberate for France, by means of Memento, with Mubi selecting up a number of territories forward of the movie’s Cannes debut. These looking for a sensible, considerate tearjerker ought to be happy with this sentimental however far-from-mawkish movie.

Reinsve performs Nora Borg, a profitable Oslo actress of stage and tv, who’s estranged from her father Gustav (Skarsgard), a once-prominent filmmaker who divorced Nora’s mom when she was a toddler. On the heels of a French retrospective of his movies, and the recognition of a latest documentary, Gustav has written a really private movie through which he desires Nora to star — though he’s hardly seen any of her work. Nora doesn’t need Gustav again in her life and when she declines the half, he as a substitute provides it to an keen American starlet, Rachel (Elle Fanning).

Collaborating once more with frequent co-writer Eskil Vogt (now additionally a profitable director), Trier fashions a nuanced have a look at each a troubled household and a dysfunctional movie trade. (Gustav’s comeback undertaking shall be distributed by means of Netflix, and the divisive streamer is the goal of a few the screenplay’s higher barbs.) Sentimental Worth makes use of Gustav’s semi-autobiographical undertaking as a window into the secrets and techniques of the Borg household, which additionally consists of Nora’s youthful, extra contented sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas). Early on, we study that Nora and Agnes’ psychotherapist mom Sissel lately died and, as a result of Gustav desires to make a movie about his personal mom, who dedicated suicide, Trier begins to peel again the historical past of melancholy that has haunted this household.

A lot of Sentimental Worth takes place within the Borg household’s residence, and an environment friendly flashback, framed as an essay Nora wrote as a woman, explains how they’ve lived in the home for generations. Now that Sissel is gone, Gustav decides to maneuver again in — in spite of everything, it’s in his identify as they by no means finalised their divorce — and shoot his private undertaking there. That barely fading household residence turns into an apt metaphor for the weathered bond Nora, Agnes and Gustav share, though Reinsve’s fragile efficiency articulates the festering resentment she feels towards her absent father.

In some methods, it is a trickier task for Reinsve than The Worst Individual In The World, presenting the viewers with an achieved actress gripped by anxiousness and melancholia. (Due to panic assaults, Nora needs to be virtually compelled onto the stage after the curtain rises.) The character’s rapport with Gustav is icy, and Reinsve hints at how Nora has by no means recovered from her dad and mom’ separation. Equal quantities of brash and reflective, Gustav sees in his daughter the identical inexhaustible spark of an artist that he possesses, and Skarsgard teases out the poignancy of a 70-year-old filmmaker who realises this undertaking could also be his final greatest probability at cementing his inventive legacy. Whether or not it will possibly additionally restore his relationship with Nora is one other matter.

Hania Rani’s wistful, spare rating brings to life the disappointment on the root of this household, even when a few of Sentimental Worth’s revelations are straightforward to foretell. And whereas Reinsve and Skarsgard find loads of the script’s quiet truths, Fanning struggles in a extra schematic function as Nora’s fill-in. Clearly, Gustav casts her out of spite as a result of she is the precise reverse of Nora — perky and blonde and glamorous fairly than stoic and brunette — however Rachel is ill-defined, and distracts from the father-daughter story at its coronary heart.