Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Lindsay Traves | Film | September 4, 2025
It was surreal to count “meta” among the defining features of Joachim Trier’s latest outing, but perhaps more apt than expected for a creator whose characters often seem like his own audience. This time, merging a story about shattered families and defining legacies with that of filmmaking and complicated auteurs, Trier is even more direct in looking through both ends of his lens.
He’s reteamed with The Worst Person in the World’s, Renate Reinsve, who this time plays a successful and sometimes difficult stage actress dancing as far away from the large shadow of her film director father (Stellan Skarsgård as Gustav Borg). The estranged family is forced to share space after the death of their matriarch which sets off the potential sale of their home, one that’s been in Gustav’s family for generations. Their relationship is fractured, but Gustav pitches his way of repairing it: asking Nora to star in his latest feature. But she (Reinsve) isn’t so forgiving, nor is she interested in working with the father she views as having left her and the rest of the family to rot while he pursued his “career,” leaving him to dip into the well of film lovers who don’t know the version of him who was an absent parent. It’s complex, playing Gustav as a sought-after hero to so many but a dud to his children. It’s a story that in some ways looks into the eyes of the audience who probably flock to artists like Gustav and have mentally reckoned with stories of their personal lives, and whether those two things can function in harmony. But this story is bigger than that of Gustav and Nora and is a more elegant tale of being the architect of your own unhappiness and of where the buck stops with inherited trauma.
Toggling through the story threads of Gustav, Nora, and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas as Gustav’s other daughter and former muse), Sentimental Value ends up weaving a richer tale than that of one person’s experience and blurs any instinct to have an emotional lead. Edges are blunted via editing which creates a frenetic toggling of character perspectives. The house becomes a central beacon, the place they all grew up, the place Gustav has reclaimed, and the set of his next film where he works with a focused but inadequate actress he tries so desperately to fit into the mold of a character made in the shape of his mother and daughter. Both his script and the film’s are so tight and rely so heavily on the stellar performances of the leads as there is so much subtext buried in what characters are not saying. Subdued deliveries, especially of the European characters, are never icy and are instead overflowing with tears that are hidden behind the eyes.
Sentimental Value is something grander than “slice of life,” but it still collects lived-in scenes that are mostly conversations about the past. These are then framed by stories of filmmaking which aren’t just meta-shots, but beats that further deepen themes of inherited trauma and family. And though it’s a mostly somber tale about reckoning with being the architect of one’s own loneliness via regret, it’s dressed in mild weather and feels like a crisp autumn day where the only thing that’s uncomfortable to be in is your own skin.
Trier’s film is the comfortable kind of film that made me satisfied burrowing into my red velvet theater seat. At the risk of laying it on too thick, it’s the sort of film that reminded me why I love film festivals like TIFF to begin with and helped reignite my love for a medium that this job can sometimes make feel like a chore.
Sentimental Value played the Toronto International Film Festival and has an expected US release of November 7, 2025
