Joachim Trier’s "Sentimental Value" is opening in Israel months after winning the Oscar for Best International Feature, and after what the review calls a stolen loss in the Best Picture race, where it was also nominated. The film centers on a home, not as a physical place but as an emotional idea, and begins with a childhood essay about whether a house can feel joy, pain, or memory.
The story jumps forward to Nora, played by Renate Reinsve, now an adult theatre actress struggling with panic attacks as her mother dies. That loss also brings back her estranged father, Gustav, a celebrated film director played by Stellan Skarsgård, who had not really been part of Nora’s or her sister Agnes’ upbringing. Gustav asks Nora to play his late mother in a very personal screenplay intended to revive his stalled career, but when she refuses, saying she wants no part in what she sees as his exploitative project, he casts American star Rachel, played by Elle Fanning, instead.
As filming begins, Rachel becomes part of the family’s emotional fabric, while Agnes, played by Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, initially seems like a detached bourgeois observer. The review says the film only gradually reveals that the project-within-the-film is about much more than it first appears, and that this shifts the meaning of the entire movie.
The critic praises Trier, 52, for building a family drama that is both intimate and unsentimental, with no obvious villains or heroes, only flawed people sharing difficult lives. The piece calls Reinsve even more moving here than in "The Worst Person in the World," highlights Agnes’ monologue as the film’s emotional core, and says Trier’s work is personally informed by his own family background in cinema, though not autobiographical. The review concludes that "Sentimental Value" is a contender for film of the decade and awards it five stars.
