As part of the Film Development Council of the Philippines’ A Curation of World Cinema, Joachim Trier’s marvelous film Sentimental Value makes its way to selected cinemas around the metro. This stunning film won the Grand Prix at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival and has earned nine nominations at the upcoming Academy Awards – including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Renate Reinsve), Best Actor (Stellan Skarsgard), and Best Supporting Actress nods for Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas; all of which are deservingly so.
A beautiful story of a family broken apart by generational trauma and a resistance to facing their own dysfunction, Sentimental Value never plays for the drama. Instead, it shows great restraint, completely capturing the textures and layers of this kind of family strife.
Interestingly enough, the film centers on a house, the family home of Gustav Berg (Skarsgard). Gustav is a film director, an alcoholic and absentee father to Nora (Reinsve) and Agnes (Lilleaas). Nora is an actress of some renown, but her personal life is a mess. She cannot seem to find love and is currently having an affair with a married man, who happens to be a co-worker.
Agnes is married and has a son, Erik (Oyvind Hesjedal Loven), but she too carries the weight of her father’s absence, and from having been cast in one of her father’s landmark films as a child. When the sisters’ mother dies, Gustav’s ex-wife, Gustav returns to their lives to reclaim the house they grew up in because that house belongs to him.
While Agnes is more tolerant and accommodating towards her father, Nora is constantly butting heads with her father. He wants to direct a film set in their home, a story inspired by his mother who was tortured during the Nazi occupation and later took her own life in that very house; the suicide being the film’s climactic scene. He wants Nora to play the character of her grandmother but Nora refuses.
To get the project going, Gustav chooses to go with the Hollywood star Rachel Kemp (Fanning), a decision that further strains his relationship with Nora. As Gustav and Rachel rehearse scenes inside the house, Nora spirals with her mental health and the looming prospect of losing the home to her father.
What is incredible about Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt’s screenplay is how each of the four characters – Gustav, Nora, Agnes, and Rachel – are all primary characters with their own character arcs and emotional journeys. They intersect yet each feels like the lead of their own film, and it just so happens that everyone is part of the same film. There’s so much weight in these character’s struggles, along with the insights and their discoveries about themselves as they navigate the emotional turmoil of their interconnected relationships, makes Sentimental Value utterly arresting; I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
Trier and cinematographer Kasper Tuxen have a beautiful habit of capturing these characters at their most unguarded moments. The way by which they shoot the house allows the setting to be an important character in the film. That house becomes the metaphor for their dynamics and for what they mean to each other.
But what really drives this film are the performances. Everyone is so good here – Skarsgard and Fanning are tremendous in their roles, playing off of each other and allowing each of their characters to be revealed in how they interact with each other – but I really took notice of Reinsve and Lilleaas in this film. Nora is a powder keg, always ready to burst. Her opening scene, a panic attack just before she goes on stage to perform. It’s a high-wire act of a performance and she nails it in her very first scene. She maintains this energy and unpredictability throughout the film, that she’s currently my favourite to win the Best Actress trophy.
Contrasting her is the more mellow, more rational Agnes. Lilleaas has the toughest role because it’s the most subdued amongst the four primary characters, yet it is her warmth that serves as the foundation that allows the characters to feel their most human side. She is such a discovery for me.
I love these well-made, personal, and intimate slow films that explore human nature. Sentimental Value is a lyrical work, yet it remains grounded and rooted in very real family struggles. Sure, Gustav is a director and Nora is a great actress, they are not the most relatable people but the way they navigate through their issues with each other is so prevalent in any real powerful father-daughter dynamic. This film is so insightful, so tender, so heartbreaking. I am so glad that we get to see it on the big screen.
My Rating: 5 Stars
Don’t miss Sentimental Value on the big screen, experience this tender, heartbreaking, and unforgettable family story for yourself. Check showtimes at selected cinemas and let Joachim Trier’s masterpiece move you.
