David Farnor | On 21, Mar 2026

Director: Joachim Trier
Cast: Stellan Skarsgård, Renate Reinsve
Certificate: 15

If you’re still recovering from being emotionally destroyed by Renate Reinsve in The Worst Woman in the World, brace yourself for another blow to the heart. Sentimental Value reunites Reinsve with director Joachim Trier, this time delving into a complicated father-daughter relationship – and layers of creativity and trauma along the way. In short, Sentimental Value certainly lives up to the first half of its title.

Reinsve plays Nora, an actor who we meet as she has a panic attack just before going on stage in A Doll’s House. In the middle of an affair with a married co-star (Anders Danielsen Lie), she’s already got enough problems – but when her mother passes away, she and her sister, Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), find their lives becoming even more complicated, as their estranged dad, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), returns for the funeral – and reveals that he still legally owns the house and wants to use it to make his next film. Oh, and he wants Nora to star in it.

What ensues is a dizzying and beautifully observed unpacking of memories and identity, as Gustav reveals that his new script is inspired by his mother, who died by suicide in the same house that they’ve all been living in – the house that Nora doesn’t want to part with, despite it serving at once as a cocoon and tomb for the family’s decades of unspoken grief. The way it’s passed down, through lack of communication, is wonderfully mirrored by the way that Gustav not only asks Nora to star in his project, but also asks Agnes to let her young son play a supporting role – in the same way that Agnes herself starred in one of Gustav’s films as a child. It’s perhaps no surprise that she never followed that career path, thanks to her feeling of abandonment by her father – the same feeling that, perhaps, drove Nora to immerse herself in playing other people.

The musing on the intersection between the personal and the professional adds another shade when Gustav hires rising Hollywood A-lister Rachel Kemp (the brilliant Elle Fanning) to take the part he offered to Nora – and we watch through both his and Nora’s eyes the spectacle of a stranger stepping into the daughter figure role both of them long for, yet can’t vocalise.

On and on it spirals through gently funny and hugely moving vignettes, each one gradually exposing Gustav’s ageing, vain narcissism, Nora’s seen yet not heard depression and Agnes’ quiet resilience and pained independence. The cast are exceptional, with the central trio aching with lived-in sadness. Reinsve grounds it, but also generously gives the screen to Stellan Skarsgård, who shines with a crumpled sincerity and charming passion, even as his unlikeable qualities come to light. Throughout, Trier observes their intricate interactions with sprawling precision, each frame of the clinically choreographed conflict as visually arresting as it is stuffed with feeling. Oh yes, the second half of the film’s title is true too.

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