Sentimental Value arrives in Israel many months after winning the Oscar for best international feature, and after, as the reviewer puts it, being “robbed” of the best picture prize, for which it was also nominated. The film, directed by Joachim Trier, is presented as a rare drama with no clichéd or forced moments, and as a story about home, not as a place but as a feeling and a family structure.
It opens with a childhood essay about a house, then jumps to the adult life of Nora, played by Renate Reinsve, a theater actress suffering panic attacks while her mother is dying. Her estranged father, Gustav, played by Stellan Skarsgård, reenters the family and offers her a role in an intensely personal script meant to revive his stalled career, asking her to play her dead grandmother. Nora refuses, seeing the request as exploitative, so Gustav casts American star Rachel, played by Elle Fanning, instead.
As the production unfolds, Rachel becomes part of the family dynamic, while Nora’s sister Agnes, played by Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, appears at first to be a passive bystander. The film slowly reveals that both the movie within the movie and the characters themselves are far more complicated than they first seem, and Agnes delivers what the reviewer calls the film’s central monologue, a moment of cinematic and human grace.
The review praises Trier, 52, for making a deeply personal but not autobiographical film, shaped by his own family background in cinema. It argues that the film balances criticism and compassion for all its characters, avoids clear heroes and villains, and instead shows “damaged people” who happened to share a life. The writer says the film moved them to tears and calls it a leading contender for film of the decade and a masterpiece.
