Joachim Trier’s latest was one of the most anticipated movies of 2025, and following a Boxing Day release, it is the last film of that year I am seeing before concentrating on 2026. It is quite a high to go out on.
Stellan Skarsgård stars as Gustav Borg, a once famous director who has not made a narrative film in 15 years. He has written a script that is his most personal yet, featuring a young mother who commits suicide in the same way as his mother did. He tries to convince his estranged daughter Nora (Renata Reinsve) to play the lead role but she cannot work with him, so he casts the hot American actress, Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) instead.
This is a richly multi textured story that really gripped me. It felt very perceptive on the strained relationships within families and provided some sly digs about the movie industry too.
Reinsve shot to fame in Trier’s Worst Person in the World in 2021, and, if anything, is even better here. It is a complex, contradictory, character, a theatre actor with terrible stage fright, an independent single woman who yearns to have someone in her life and a daughter who refuses to forgive her Dad walking out on her when she was a kid but desperately wants his approval. Reinsve manages to convey all that, and more.
Skarsgård has an easier role, as the irascible man with a twinkle in his eye but is undeniably great too, and Fanning, who continues to choose interesting projects, impresses. Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas is also excellent as Nora’s well adjusted younger sister who has managed to hide her problems better than Nora.
You could argue that Sentimental Value is not very original as it pulls ideas from Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen, but those are pretty great influences!
Rating: 9 out of 10