Sentimental Value: A Review - Of Fathers and Daughters

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A fantastic film that boasts as superb a cast and performances as I’ve seen in years.

Sentimental Value, written and directed by Joachim Trier, tells the story of two adult sisters, Nora and Agnes, as they reunite with their estranged filmmaker father after the death of their mother.

The film, which is mostly in Norwegian with English subtitles, hit screens back on Christmas Day and is now available to stream on Hulu, which is where I watched it. (Speaking of Hulu – they are on a great run with their film catalogue this year with It Was Just an Accident, The Secret Agent and now Sentimental Value.)

Sentimental Value is a distinctly European film in tone, theme and style, which more mainstream viewers might find a bit impenetrable. But if given the chance, the film is most definitely worthy if for no other reason than it features a bevy of top-notch acting talent – Renate Reinsve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Elle Fanning and Stellan Skarsgard, giving awards-worthy performances. In fact, the film, which won the Best International Feature Film Oscar, also received nominations for Best Actress (Reinsve), Best Supporting Actress (Lilleaas and Fanning), and Best Supporting actor (Skarsgard).

The plot of the film is that Nora (Renata Reinsve) and her younger sister, Agnes, (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) are hosting the funeral for their recently deceased psychotherapist mother when their estranged father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgard), unexpectedly arrives.

Gustav is an acclaimed filmmaker and his career is, like his life, fading. Nora, a stage and tv actress, and Agnes, a historian and young mother, are resentful of Gustav having left their mother and abandoning them as children.

Gustav, played with exquisite skill and aplomb by Stellan Skarsgard, is a narcissist and manipulator who is like a hurricane blowing through people’s lives.

Nora and Agnes brace for Hurricane Gustav but do so in different ways. His relationship with each of them is very different, with Nora much more resentful and emotionally stunted, and Agnes more forgiving and open.

Gustav, seemingly out of self-interest, has come back to his familial home where the girls were raised but from which he ran, with a new script he has written, and wants Nora to star in it.

I will refrain from any other discussion about plot, except to say that from there, drama ensues…and it is a glorious, complex, insightful, and revelatory drama that is extremely compelling, and despite its European/ arthouse trappings, thoroughly satisfying.

The acting on display in Sentimental Value is as good as any you’ll see in any film this year, or in recent memory.

Renate Reinsve is electrifying as the eldest daughter Nora. I first saw Reinsve in Trier’s fantastic 2021 film, The Worst Person in the World. She is a wonderful actress who brings a vibrant inner life and sharp complexity to each of her roles. She is a beauty, but a deeply complicated and conflicted one…never easily understood or comfortable.

Reinsve has some scenes in this film, the details of which I will not divulge, that are so great it made me want to crawl out of my skin and scream in agony and ecstasy. She is a magnificent and magnetic screen presence and one of the best actresses we have working right now.

Elle Fanning plays Rachel Kemp, an American actress dripping with all the trappings of American stardom in the movie world. Fanning is fantastic as the new it-girl thrown into the disorienting storm that is Stellan Skarsgard’s Gustav. Fanning is a fascinating actress. She is at once goofy and gullible yet also sexy and smart…a lethal combination. One can imagine an actress of her versatility and presence being a force in film for decades to come.

Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas plays the younger daughter Agnes, who is the most composed and least damaged of everyone involved but even she is not without issues. Lilleaas is an extraordinarily captivating screen presence who never pushes or forces things but just lets things be as they are and simply lives in the presence of it.

These three women give utterly phenomenal performances and the credit for that goes to, first of all…them for their talent, skill and commitment…but also to Joachim Trier for writing such layered and complicated characters, and for having such a deft directing touch with his cast.

As great as these women are…and goodness gracious they are great, the straw that stirs this drink is the ever-reliable Stellan Skarsgard. Skarsgard is good in everything he does, but in Sentimental Value as Gustav he brings all his skill and talent to bear and embodies his narcissistic character with a calculating charisma that is undeniable while also being repellent.

Skarsgard’s god-like Gustav is a force of nature and personality that alters the gravity field wherever he wanders and is consistently destabilizing and destructive while being blissfully unaware of the damage he does but not of the power he wields. Gustav has desperately been the center of the universe for the entirety of his adulthood, but now Father Time is rearing his ugly head and Gustav finds himself out of control and running out of time…that that dramatic clash is glorious.

Which brings us to writer/director Joachim Trier. Trier is a phenomenal filmmaker. His previous film, The Worst Person in the World, is a mesmerizing masterwork, and Sentimental Value is similar in its dramatic success.

Trier is one of those rare combinations of filmmakers that is an elite writer and an elite director of actors, and the proof of that is obvious in Sentimental Value.

Trier’s understanding of father-daughter dynamics and the intricacies of the artistic mind and spirit are astonishing, and his bravery to show those things without a safety net is equally impressive.

Ultimately, the distance between father and daughter is an ocean, and it can never be crossed…but there can be fleeting moments of understanding, glimpses across the vast divide, that reveal a deeper, more meaningful connection than most can fully, consciously, comprehend. This is the story of Sentimental Value…and it is a story that is well worth your time and effort.

If you like complex dramas made for grown-ups that feature stellar performances across the board, then Sentimental Value is for you…it most definitely was for me…as I thought it was one of the best films of the year.

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