With Sentimental Value, Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier returns to the terrain of intimate renewal and fractured legacies, crafting a film that is at once meditative and emotionally precise. The story centres on a once-renowned director, Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård), who re-enters the lives of his estranged daughters — stage actress Nora (Renate Reinsve) and historian-turned-mother Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) — after the death of their mother and the inheritance of the family home in Oslo. When Gustav proposes a new film about his own mother’s wartime trauma and asks Nora to star, long-buried resentments and generational wounds surface in the creaking house, the unspoken past and the contested present.
Released in theatres 7 November 2025 and running 133 minutes, the film has drawn widespread critical acclaim — particularly for its performances, emotional depth and painterly staging — while some critics raise questions about its pacing and clarity.
What Critics Are Saying
Critics have resonated deeply with the film’s exploration of memory, art and family. Romantic, melancholic and richly detailed, the film is described by RogerEbert.com as “a movie that sneaks up on you … blending theme and character in a way that allows it to live in your mind after you see it.” Vanity Fair calls it “gorgeously staged … tracing the family’s emotional journey in buoyant, funny and prickly vignettes” while acknowledging its atmospheric weights. Le Monde emphasises how “pain appears just beneath the surface” and lauds Trier’s layering of archival imagery, personal trauma and spatial metaphor in the house with the crack that mirrors the family’s fissures.
On the flip side, The Guardian notes the film is “a baggy comedy, sentimental in ways that are not entirely intentional,” suggesting that while the intentions are high, the effect sometimes drifts into indulgence. Together, these reviews suggest the film achieves much — superb performances, visual grace, emotional resonance — but also carries the risk of its own expansiveness and introspective texture.
Praise came from outlets like The Telegraph and The Hollywood Reporter, where the film was described as rich in emotional rewards and reflective of memory, home and art. Even the New York Post review, which acknowledged the cast’s talent, found the film “slow, chilly, and lacking the intrigue of past international hits,” arguing that the emotional distance was a barrier to full resonance.
In other words: Critics largely agree the film is crafted with care and features standout acting and technical finesse. But some warn that its pacing, its reflective mood, and its high-art aesthetic may limit its emotional reach or audience connection.
Sentimental Value: Cast, Crew & Creative Context
Directed and co-written by Joachim Trier (with longtime collaborator Eskil Vogt), Sentimental Value is produced by Mer Film and distributed in North America by Neon. The cast features Renate Reinsve as Nora, Stellan Skarsgård as Gustav Borg, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas as Agnes, and Elle Fanning as Rachel Kemp — a Hollywood actress whose arrival into this Norwegian family upends their fragile equilibrium. Cinematography by Kasper Tuxen and editing by Olivier Bugge Coutté are often singled out for their subtle command of space and time. The film premiered at Cannes 2025, where it reportedly received a 19-minute standing ovation.
Trier’s previous work, including The Worst Person in the World, underscores his interest in characters caught between desire and disappointment, but here his focus is familial rather than romantic, generational rather than personal.
Performances, Technique & Themes
At the heart of Sentimental Value lies a trio of exceptional performances. Skarsgård infuses Gustav with charisma and regret, walking the delicate line between performative confidence and emotional vulnerability. Reinsve’s Nora is calibrated for control and breakdown — the actress who rejects her father’s script but cannot reject her bond to him. Many critics say she surpasses her earlier work here. Lilleaas as Agnes offers a quietly powerful counterpart — the sister who once was in the spotlight, now lives in the shadows, and harbours the deepest wounds.
Technically, Trier employs domestic space — the inherited house with its structural crack, the staircase, the windows, the camera’s lingering glances — as metaphor for emotional architecture. Reviewers at KQED note how “the film lets moments of expression emerge organically,” avoiding heavy symbolism even as it embraces it. ([turn0search7]) And the script allows characters to breathe and evolve, moving from stilted confrontation into wordless truth. Some critics see this as the film’s greatest strength — others as a risk of excess. ([turn0search6])
Thematically, the film addresses the interplay between art and legacy: how an artist father draws from his own past to craft a cinematic expression, and how his daughters react — as creative women in their own right — to being cast as characters in that legacy. It asks whether art can heal trauma or simply re-open wounds; whether families can find memory or are haunted by it. And it uses humour and empathy rather than ferocity to do so.
Sentimental Value is a film that asks watchers to slow down, sit in the spaces between words, and witness the way history and creativity shape lives. It doesn’t simplify the scars; it reframes them. It offers quiet but firm hope rather than catharsis. The performances elevate the script; the direction shapes atmosphere with precision. If it occasionally drifts into introspective luxury, it still feels deeply alive and thoughtfully composed. For viewers drawn to emotionally layered cinema that examines not just what happened but how it changed people across decades, this film stands out as one of the year’s most resonant.
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