The film Sentimental Value, directed by Joachim Trier, has generated attention for its restrained emotional language and the strength of a multi-generational ensemble. Rather than relying on spectacle, the film unfolds as a series of intimate encounters that reveal family tensions, artistic longing and the ways people avoid direct expression. This piece unpacks how the screenplay, performances and visual craft combine to make a modest story feel expansive.
At the center of the narrative are three generations linked by history and creative ambition. Through measured scenes and carefully calibrated silences, Trier and his collaborators let small gestures accumulate into profound revelations. The result is a film that many viewers find both quietly moving and unexpectedly humorous.
The narrative core: family, art and avoidance
The plot orbits around Gustav Borg, a once-renowned director who returns to his daughters’ lives after their mother’s death and attempts a cinematic comeback. Gustav’s presence catalyzes tensions between memory and ambition, and between public artistry and private failings. The screenplay—crafted by Joachim Trier and his frequent collaborator Eskil Vogt—builds its momentum on what characters don’t say as much as on what they do. This technique produces a storytelling rhythm that feels like a series of sideways approaches toward the truth.
Characters as conduits of feeling
Nora, a volatile stage actress, channels emotion through performance; Agnes, the steadier sibling, expresses devotion in quieter domestic terms. Gustav, meanwhile, is more fluent in filmmaking than in fatherhood. The film frequently uses surrogate expression—objects, roles, and creative projects—to stand in for direct conversation. These substitutions function as emotional shorthand, allowing subtle revelations to surface without melodrama.
Performance and casting: a study in contrasts
The cast anchors the film’s emotional architecture. Renate Reinsve portrays Nora with a mix of magnetism and fragility, delivering moments that alternate between comic impulsiveness and heartache. Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas plays Agnes with a quiet resilience that belies the character’s internal struggles. Stellan Skarsgård embodies Gustav as a charismatic yet frustrating paternal figure, credible both as an artist and as an absentee father trying to reconnect. Elle Fanning appears as Rachel Kemp, an American actress whose presence complicates the family dynamic and becomes a mirror for Gustav’s ambitions.
Why the ensemble matters
The film’s emotional clarity depends on the ensemble’s chemistry. Each actor brings a distinctive register: some scenes gain their weight from comic timing, others from the ache of restraint. The casting choices emphasize the film’s central paradox: characters are often more honest in their art than in their relationships. That contrast gives the performances an enduring, human texture.
Craft elements: visual and editorial choices
Beyond acting, the film’s technical team shapes its sensibility. Cinematographer Kasper Tuxen composes frames that favor contemplative observation—longer takes and carefully lit interiors invite audiences to linger on faces and details. Editor Olivier Bugge Coutté paces the story with an attuned sense of rhythm, allowing comedic beats and silent interludes to land with equal force. These choices emphasize the filmic language as a way of communicating what words cannot.
The story also leans on setting: the family home, layered with generational memory, functions as both stage and archive. Location becomes a character, its rooms storing history that resurfaces through objects and gestures. In that context, Gustav’s proposed film about his mother acts as a meta-commentary on how artists transform private pain into public narrative.
Why the film connects with audiences
At its core, the film succeeds because it trusts viewers to perceive nuance. Rather than spelling out catharsis, it stages a process of gradual recognition: characters approach meaning indirectly, through art, avoidance and small acts of care. This indirectness makes the story feel authentic to anyone who has experienced family dynamics where love and disappointment coexist in complicated ways.
For many viewers, the film’s blend of humor and melancholy is what makes its moments of revelation resonate. It reframes the cinematic experience as a slow accretion of detail—an accumulation of looks, missed opportunities and gentle reconciliations—so that when understanding finally arrives, it feels earned rather than imposed.
In short, Sentimental Value demonstrates how a film can be both modest in scope and richly affecting. Through precise performances, thoughtful cinematography and an emotionally intelligent screenplay, Joachim Trier and his collaborators have shaped a story that speaks to the complexities of family, art and the ways people learn to tell the truth obliquely.
