From the very first scene a narration introduces us to the family home, a property that has spanned generations, contexts, and moods. It has witnessed both joyful feasts and broken families. It carries within it memories of all kinds. For Nora and her sister Agnes, the house is a direct link to traumas they still carry, complete with a crack in the wall that acts almost like a wound made visible. Their motives differ, but both are hostages to this pain. That sense of being held hostage by memory influences how they avoid intimacy, but also how they channel their search for relief into work, into art, into performance.
One of the greatest successes in Sentimental Value is Trier’s inventive way of capturing the emotions of his cast. Cinema has always produced countless films about psychological distress, but this one emanates freshness. There are nods to other filmmakers and influences — a Bergmanesque interposition between Reinsve’s and Stellan Skarsgård’s faces, the way windows frame characters both in static moments and in movement. Static scenes sometimes feel like paintings, windows dividing father and daughter, colored lights in backgrounds, spaces that separate yet connect. Elle Fanning, who appears as the young Hollywood star cast to replace Nora, brings a naive energy coupled with earnest striving. Her character conveys both ambition and a vulnerability that makes one of the film’s most moving scenes.
Renate Reinsve is, as usual, magnificent. She holds the emotional weight of Nora without collapsing under it. She moves between restraint and release, between love and anger, between longing and rejection. Anders Danielsen Lee’s role, though less central, is striking: he plays someone who knows the history of the family, knows what’s been said and unsaid, and how silence echoes longer than the loudest words.
Trier’s direction is elegant and precise. He uses camera placement, transitions, superimpositions in ways I seldom see. The film’s structure is deliberate, often slow, allowing feelings to settle and breathe. Some scenes build quietly, with sound and silence alternating, music entering gently rather than forcing emotion. There are moments where faces are held in long takes, discomfort exposed, small gestures magnified into confession.
But the film does have its weak spots. Some structure does not hold up as well. It drags at points. Certain threads that are introduced early never quite reach full development. I found myself wanting more intimacy with Agnes. Her pain is there, but I wished we saw more of her life outside of her relationship with Nora and Gustav. Small subplots about Gustav’s past, or Nora’s temptations, feel underexplored. And while the last act hits hard, there were parts of the film where the emotional frequency felt lower than I expected for a story so rooted in family trauma.
Still, the last act delivers. It brings together themes of betrayal, love, regret, reconciliation in ways that feel earned. There are revelations that emerged subtly, moments that surprised me not with shock but with recognition: recognition of my own family, my own regrets, my own longing. And while it did not move me as deeply as some of Trier’s earlier work, I admired everything on display: the design, the script, the performances. It is a wonderful examination of deep-seated pain that goes unspoken between family members, and how art becomes the way to talk about it without having to talk about it.
Visually the film is striking. The family home is a character. Sunlight through windows, shadows, frames within frames. Interiors rich with mood. Norway’s landscapes soften the darker moods. Fashion and decor reflect generational layers. The cinematography often captures bookended faces, overlapping glances, and that crack in the wall that reminds you that beauty and damage often live in the same frame.
Sound and narrative pacing collaborate well. Trier resists quick fixes. Sometimes the silence lingers. Sometimes dialogue is minimal. And when characters do speak of past wounds or break down, the moments are powerful precisely because they are rare. Elle Fanning’s character is not used as an ornament but as a contrast, someone who is new to it, who does not carry the family history, who makes mistakes, who is learning. Her scenes are emotionally exceptional.
What I appreciated most is Trier’s idea that what we value sentimentally is rarely just pretty; often it is heavy, stained, imperfect. The objects, the house, the photographs: they are places where pain lingers. The scene in which Agnes researches her grandmother’s past in a library, receiving a folder labelled “disturbing,” walked through by a clerk who warns of what’s inside, is one of the most heart-pounding moments in the film. It is not shock that makes it powerful, but the knowledge that what we buried is never quite buried.
Even knowing its flaws I believe Sentimental Value is a deeply humane film. It isn’t just about artistry or the making of movies. It is about how we are all actors in someone else’s story, or in our own — how we wear roles in family, in legacy, in memory. The father is charismatic and flawed. The sisters are wounded, combative, loving. Progress is not linear and forgiveness is not guaranteed. But Trier holds space for grace.
For a critic like me, who loves when films leave you in pieces and quietly hopeful at the same time, this one mostly delivers. If it had had fewer dangling subplots, more frequency of emotional hits, or deeper excavation of certain characters, it might have been among Trier’s deepest works. But even so it is remarkable. Reinsve is a powerhouse as per usual. Elle Fanning brings something new. Anders Danielsen Lee is quietly strong. And Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård) is both tower and wreck.
At the end of Sentimental Value, I walked out with
that mixture of sadness and satisfaction you only feel when a movie has taken
risks just by being so honest. This is another great Trier film. It might not
quite break your heart in the way Worst Person in the World could, but
it asks you to consider legacy, regret, love, and what it means to build
meaning when we are all, in some way, haunted by what came before.
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