Imagine a standing ovation lasting for 19 minutes – enough time to have a bath. That’s what Sentimental Value got when it was shown at Cannes. Where, admittedly, they like this sort of thing – European, dense, non-genre, self-referential, serious, full of unsympathetic characters and recalling auteurs of the past. Bergman most obviously, and Persona in particular, a high point in his career of high points.
There is a story, though it’s a jumping-off point for a series of meditations rather than a plot. After their mother dies, two sisters, Nora and Agnes, are slightly surprised and perturbed when estranged father, a cinema auteur whose best days are probably behind him, re-appears. Gustav, it turns out, owns the family home, though he hasn’t lived in it for years. Is he about to sell it from under them, this place where generations have grown up? Or is he really hanging around to try and persuade Nora to star in his next film, which he says he’s written expressly for her?
At the edge of things a famous film star who loves the work of Gustav. She flatters his ego by stepping in when Nora turns her father down. From here things weave and interweave, the timeline sliding fluidly between the 1940s and the present day. Here, the charming Gustav – a ladies man even in his advancing years – is trying both to make a film and fold himself back into the lives of his daughters. Though they are wary of this bad dad whose tune has changed opportunistically. Soft words now weigh against the injuries in the past, to their psychoanalyst mother, mostly.
This is the fourth time out for Joachim Trier and his lead actress, Renate Reinsve, who memorably did The Worst Person in the World together. It is something of a tight team all round – the DP from that film, Kasper Tuxen, is also back, as is editor Olivier Bugge Coutté. In a sense this is The Worst Person in the World Part Two – freeform, novelistic, a touch nothing in its set-up, which is very Bergman, and yet yielding immense emotional payoff in its execution.
Reinsve has got most of the plaudits – The Guardian recently suggested Reinsve is “one of the greatest actors of her generation”. I’ve no idea what that means, but she’s undoubtedly very good here. But then so is Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas as Agnes, the daughter who’s always been the runner-up in dad’s affections. Elle Fanning plays famous Hollywood actress Rachel Kemp like the famous Hollywood actress she is. Stellan Skarsgård is the dad, twinkling, charismatic, a core of steel. It is a superb ensemble and singling out anyone – Anders Danielsen and Jesper Christensen are here too – is unfair. Though with a gun to my head I’d go for Skarsgård over Reinsve. He has the harder role to play – Gustav is a complex and possibly dangerous man – and Skarsgård plays it remarkably well. Not bad for a man who had a stroke between Dune: Part One and Part Two and says he now feels like he’s living “under the sword”.
It’s a layered film full of themes and debatable points, setting up so many tangled oppositions – reality and acting, stage and screen, place and person, past and present, identity and role-playing – that it makes you feel clever watching it.
The females are Bergman-esque in their tendency towards a frayed emotional abstraction and there is an explicit visual reference to Persona at one point, when it’s suggested that the Nora and Rachel’s personalities are somehow crossing over. The concept of individual integrity is up for grabs, which comes across as more problematic in Trier and regular co-writer Eskil Vogt’s hands than in Bergman’s, where it looked both existentially fraught and kind of fun (Bergman “fun” being on a different scale altogether).
Vogt and Trier have made seven films together now, and they seem to be getting better at it – though there isn’t a duffer on the list including Oslo, August 31st, Thelma and The Worst Person in the World. Is this a better film than that? Yes, probably. It’s richer and would reward repeated viewings. It won the Golden Globe for best motion picture but is also nominated for Best International Feature at the Oscars, where it’ll be fighting off The Secret Agent, It Was Just an Accident and Sirāt, among others. It’s clearly the one to beat.
Sentimental Value – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
