As the film opens, we are given a brief description of a house, a home that was built with a faulty foundation that has led to a crack that is slowly expanding and will eventually cause the home to come crashing down. This crack, that follows the house from its foundation all the way to the roof, marring details and the craftsmanship, is a metaphor for the family that lives there, the generations that called it their home, and the pain that has spanned across the entire family line. The overlaid narration might be considered too on the nose, except we learn that we are hearing an essay written by one of the characters, and this is her way of expressing some of the emotional baggage that she has allowed to define and control her life, imagining how the house would feel about things were it capable of it. The rest of the film will bring added subtext to this opening narration and give us a clearer picture of exactly what she is trying to express in her writings here.
What writer/director Joachim Trier is trying to express here in his latest picture is how we express ourselves, especially to those whom we may love but find those lines of communication broken down. Some find it easier to communicate through their art, rather than their voice, expressing through their writings what they cannot get out any other way. We see this is Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård), a film director who doesn’t know how to communicate with his daughters, especially Nora (Renate Reinsve). Years before the story proper, he and his wife got divorced, and he disappeared from their lives. Now that their mother has just passed away, he is trying to be more in their lives but is finding that he can’t just come back into the family as if nothing has happened.
Nora resents her father for abandoning them. She tries to hide it, but she also shares a lot of the same interests that he has, including being an entertainer. But she restricts herself to television and stage acting, refusing any possible benefits that could come her way from being the daughter of a famous film director. When we first see her, she is having a panic attack right before the curtain call at the start of a live performance. She is doing anything to delay going out there on the stage, including tearing at her clothes, trying to coerce her theater colleague and romantic interest, Jakob (Anders Danielsen Lie), into sex, even insisting at one point that he hit her. When she finally does make it out on the stage, she is brilliant, but getting there is hectic and erratic. This is not a girl who has her life pulled together well.
Her sister, on the other hand, seems to be much more well-balanced, at least on the surface. Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) is married, has a son, and is more forgiving of her father’s absences, though she still feels the pain of it. She was once in one of his films and relished the attention she got during it but afterwards felt abandoned by him. When he suggests using her young son Erik for a small role in his new film, she refuses because she is afraid that Erik will have the same experience and be just as hurt.
Gustav has some trauma in his past that he refuses to talk about. His mother was arrested by the Nazis and tortured. Later, she committed suicide when he was just a young boy. As a filmmaker, he has danced around his pain, touching on it lightly but never outright confronting it. This has translated into how he feels about Nora, too, unable to confront his feelings for his daughter. Consequently, she feels unwanted and unimportant to him. She focuses on stage acting, knowing he hates the format, then gets emotionally detached when he doesn’t show up for one of her performances. He, on the other hand, didn’t show up because he felt that she didn’t want him there.
As a way of trying to reach out to her, Gustav pens a script just for her, delving into his trauma with his own mother while also identifying a dark moment in Nora’s life that he senses even though only she, Agnes, and Agnes’s husband know about it. He presents the script to her, extending the olive branch in the hopes that she will read it, understand him a bit better, and work with him. But she refuses outright, insisting that they never talk and she cannot work with him, but she is just as silent with him as he is with her. These two are more alike than they are willing to admit.
This brings in Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), a famous American actress who accepts the role intended for Nora but finds that she cannot figure out this character because Gustav will not give her any insights into it. She senses that there is more subtext and has figured out that he wrote it for Nora but cannot get a bead on what is missing and why she was chosen for a part that is so wrong for her. She idolizes Gustav and his work and wants to work with him but eventually has to back out because he is so closed off to her about this character.
Renate Reinsve had her breakthrough role in 2021’s The Worst Person in the World, a film that had some Oscar buzz five years ago. That film had some interesting looks at self-worth and romance and was a wonderful showcase for Renate’s talent. She is playing a similar character here in Sentimental Value, though the depths of her emotional baggage are far deeper. When she sees her father at a social gathering, he is openly embracing the other guests, including Agnes, but when he sees her, she is so rigid and unmoving that we think he is going to avoid even touching her. Instead, he gives her a kind of half-hug, not quite the warm embrace he has shown the others. Later, he finds her outside, and the two just look at each other, neither able to verbalize anything.
He’s called out at some point for only being able to speak when drunk, and we see some of that too. He gets a bit cruel and judgmental during those times, vocalizing a generational gap with his daughters, such as when he calls out Nora’s lack of children and how he feels no one regrets having them. There is a bite to his remarks as he remains blissfully unaware of how much his words are cutting into her. Their refusal to communicate properly leads to the misunderstanding over her show, mistakenly believing that he is not wanted in attendance. Afterwards, she shuts down even more, to the point that Agnes fears she may attempt to take her own life again.
There is so much to unpack in this part of the film that it really needs to be experienced to fully grasp it. Agnes reads her father’s script shortly after Rachel leaves the project. What she reads in there, very little of which we are privy to, makes her realize that what he has written, disguised as a story about his mother, is really about Nora. This is his way of confronting his complicated feelings for his daughter, and it has gone rejected by her. Agnes goes to Nora, concerned for her emotional and physical well-being, and brings the script with her, urging her to read a passage from it. From there, Nora finally reads the whole script. During this scene, Agnes finds Nora shut down, staring blankly at a television with her place in a state of disarray. Nora looks and acts like she has emotionally checked out of her life and may really be on the brink of ending it all.
This moment shows us just how important these two sisters are to each other, too, and how they cared for each other when their father was largely absent. It’s touching and poignant while also not overdoing the moment. We see the deep caring that they had for each other and how Agnes may look like the normal one on the outside but she, too, is hurting and in need of comfort.
This is the kind of film that truly highlights its cast. Indeed, all four main cast members have been nominated for Academy Awards, including Elle Fanning, who is simply fantastic in a more limited role as the famous actress brought unwittingly into the middle of a family drama. Stellan Skarsgård has always been a standout performer in a career that spans decades, and it is nice to see him getting some Oscar attention for once. But the real standout is Renate, who gets the lion’s share of screentime and is simply stellar playing a broken woman struggling with keeping it all together.
Sentimental Value is also nominated for Best International Feature Film, a distinction it shares with another Best Picture nominee, The Secret Agent. Having not seen The Secret Agent at this point, I cannot say with certainty which of the two, if any, will win that award, but it is my suspicion that it will be Sentimental Value. This film just has the emotional heft and the depth to speak to all of our souls in a way that elevates it above so many other films. It’s brilliantly written and even better acted. These are relationships we can believe in and may even recognize in our own lives. This is simply an amazing film that is so rich in emotion and complex familial layers that it speaks to our humanity and touches on our own insecurities in our own lives. It feels honest and visceral and able to call attention to our own deficiencies in life, something that many films cannot quite achieve. Joachim Trier has once again given us a film with emotion and depths that simply demands we watch it and plumb these depths alongside his characters.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Maria Ekerhovd and Andrea Berentsen Ottmar
Best Director: Joachim Trier
Best Actress: Renate Reinsve
Best Supporting Actor: Stellan Skarsgård
Best Supporting Actress: Elle Fanning
Best Supporting Actress: Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas
Best Original Screenplay: Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt
Best International Feature Film: Norway
Best Film Editing: Olivier Bugge Coutté
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Release Date: December 26, 2025
Running Time: 133 minutes
Rated R
Starring: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, and Elle Fanning
Directed by: Joachim Trier
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