I just saw Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier’s new film, which promises to be a serious contender for Norway for Best International Feature Film at the 2026 Academy Awards. Complicated parent-child relationships are at the heart of Sentimental Value, a new drama that many have hailed as Trier’s best movie to date. Although it’s thoughtfully crafted and well-acted, it strikes me as one of Trier’s lesser efforts – the kind of lofty, self-consciously mature work that often gets more praise than its richer, livelier predecessors like Reprise, August 31 and The Worst Person in the World. Sentimental Valueis a disjointed family drama centered on two adult sisters and their long-estranged father, who reappears after their mother’s death.
Renate Reinsve, the radiant star of The Worst Person in the World, here plays Nora, an accomplished stage actor whose mother has recently died. As she grieves with her younger sister, Agnes, wonderfully played by Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Nora must deal with the return of their long-estranged father, Gustav, played by Stellan Skargård. Gustav, a film director of some note, abandoned the family when the girls were still young. Now, years later, he surprises Nora by presenting her with a new script and asking her to play the lead role.
Nora turns him down, and so Gustav casts a Hollywood star, Rachel Kemp, played by Elle Fanning. (Gustav’s movie is being financed by Netflix, which allows Trier to introduce some delectable film-industry satire.) Rachel is game and loves Gustav’s work, but she’s clearly ill at ease with the material – partly because she isn’t Norwegian, and partly because the character seems based on Gustav’s mother, who died tragically when he was just a boy.
Sentimental Value starts with a narration of the history of a house, a gorgeous piece of Norwegian folk architecture that looks like a relic in modern Oslo. Generations of the Borg family have been born, lived, loved, fought, reconciled, and died within its walls. The building itself is portrayed as a character, a living breathing memory of all the lives that have passed through. It’s a lovely introduction, establishing a rich sense of time and place and mood.
Nora is a troubled person. We are introduced to her in a wild and funny scene of her having a panic attack before she steps out onstage as a lead performer at the National Theatre in a production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabbler. She clearly struggles with anxiety and depression, stemming back from her childhood when Gustav left his young family. She’s having an ill-advised affair with her married colleague, she can’t deal with packing up her mother’s house, and she’s appalled that her father’s attempt at reconciliation is a guise for getting her to star in his next film.
Gustav, meanwhile, thinks his new screenplay, his first film in 15 years, is one of his best. While at the Cannes Film Festival where a retrospective of his films is being screened, he meets hot Hollywood actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), who sees as a surrogate daughter for him. Gustav figures that she could be the star he needs for his movie since his own daughter refuses to even read the script. Rachel is intrigued and flattered with the offer of the role, if genuinely hesitant. She knows her limits, and struggles to see how she fits into his vision of a tale of a Norwegian mother (based on Gustav’s own mother) who kills herself after sending her young son off to school. To top it off, Gustav wants to film it in the family house that he abandoned years ago, in the same room that his own mother actually killed herself when he was seven.
The lead performances by Reinsve and Skarsgård, however, are terrific. Reinsve, who has become something of a muse for director Joachim Trier, balances Nora’s pain and dark humor with nuance. Skarsgård plays Gustav as self-centered, capable of fatherly warmth only toward the young American actress, unable to see how profoundly he hurts his own daughters by viewing them as potential collaborators rather than family.
Elle Fanning, just like her character Rachel Kemp, seems miscast. Her character has a bracing and very American directness that cuts through all the wry Nordic reserve. Does it work or seem grating? Sentimental Value ultimately felt disjointed. Did it want to be about the sisters, or the dad, or the dad’s relationship with his daughters, or his relationship with the American actress?
Gustav’s time at Cannes, seemed to be a tangential scene that went on too long, distracting from the more engaging scenes back in Norway. Ironically. Sentimental Value won the Grand Prix at Cannes. In building toward a redemptive ending, Sentimental Value lets everyone off the hook too easily, especially Gustav. You can’t blame Skarsgård, who plays the role with his typically irresistible, irascible charm. As we see in the ending of the film, “sentimental value” wins, as art gets its way.
