Sentimental Value movie review: Sophisticated family drama with superb performances

Even on a second viewing, none of Sentimental Value’s emotional power has waned. If anything, knowing where the film is going, everything takes on an even deeper resonance.

This is a film that sets out to make you feel things, but does it with seeming effortlessness, so you never feel like big moments are being signposted.

A sophisticated adult drama (remember those?) that revels in its character work and superb performances, Sentimental Value quickly became a critical favourite after its premiere at Cannes in May.

It now stands to do very well at the Oscars, which is not insignificant for a Norwegian film, but we are in an era when national borders and language barriers matter less and less.

Good thing too, because you can easily imagine that a decade earlier, this wonderful film would have half the audience around the world when it deserves to seen by all.

It’s not just what it deserves, it’s what you, the viewer, deserve.

Directed and co-written by Joachim Trier, the filmmaker reunited with his lead from his fantastic rom-com/drama from 2021, The Worst Person in the World, Renate Reinsve. It’s the third time they’ve worked together and it’s a perfect marriage of filmmaker and actor.

Trier seems to have this gift of eliciting from Reinsve these tender and yet, ironically, unsentimental performances that feel like they belong to a real person with all that prickliness, vulnerability and warmth. Together, they understand the contradictions within a person is what makes them interesting.

Nora (Reinsve) is very interesting, not because she tells you she is, not because the movie tells you she is, but because Sentimental Value, over time, shows you she is.

Nora is an actor in Oslo who despite frequently working on stage, is still sometimes overwhelmed by stage fright. Her father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgard), is a celebrated filmmaker, and her sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) was a child actor in their father’s movies but now has a normal job and a young family.

Gustav returns to Oslo after the death of his former wife, and the girls’ mother, moving back into the home his family has owned for generations. It was under that roof his own mother, who had been arrested and tortured during the nazi occupation, had suicided when Gustav was a young boy.

It’s been 10 years since his most recent film and he’s ready to make another, a story seemingly inspired by his mother and her death. He asks Nora to play the role but decades of physical and emotional distance have damaged their relationship and she refuses.

Sentimental Value is about these relationships between father and daughter and between sisters, as well as that between Gustav and a famous American actor, Rachel (Elle Fanning), who takes on the role instead.

The film project is a catalyst for each character to confront unresolved traumas stemming from feelings of abandonment across generations.

Despite dealing in heavy themes, Sentimental Value never feels like a burden, it keeps it relatively light and there are a couple of brilliant jokes (a potshot at Netflix’s resistance to cinema releases triggered guffaws) to leaven the mood.

At the heart of it is Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt’s beautifully nuanced and well-structured script, and those magnificent performances.

Skarsgard and Reinsve have been heaped with praise for bringing to life these lived-in characters who are more connected than they realise, but it’s actually Lilleaas as younger sister Agnes who often steals the scene.

But not by being showy. Her physicality and expressive eyes can convey in a second what other actors spend whole seasons of TV shows failing to do. Her screen presence does what her character does, which is to pull everyone together.

It’s rare for a movie to come along and for you to immediately know that this one is special.

Rating: 5/5

Sentimental Value is in cinemas on Boxing Day