DIRECTOR
Joachim Trier
The Worst Person in the World, Thelma, Louder Than Bombs, Oslo August 31st, Reprise

STARS
Renate Reinsve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Stellan Skarsgård and Elle Fanning

Fresh off the back of their two-time Academy Award ® nominated romantic comedy-drama from 2021, The Worst Person in the World, co-writer & director Joachim Trier and lead actress Renate Reinsve team up once more in the familial relationship drama, Sentimental Value.

Its potential road to Oscar’s glory is off to the right start. It is Norway’s official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 2026 Academy Awards and claimed the Grand Prize award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for director Joachim Trier, where it was also the recipient of a 19-minute standing ovation.

Speaking of which, stage actress Nora Borg (Renate Reinsve) receives a standing ovation herself at the conclusion of her latest performance shortly after Sentimental Value begins, though her audience are oblivious to the backstage drama that threatened its completion. Whether a case of severe stage fright alone or some other anxieties in the mix, it is immediately perceptible there is something quite significant underpinning what just occurred.

That early backstage drama merely raises the curtains to the personal ones engulfing Nora when her number one trigger, her estranged father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), re-enters her life after the passing of her mother. Gustav, an established filmmaker, abandoned his family, including Nora’s sister, Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) several years ago. Nora is noticeably hurt and angry and doesn’t hold back too much from speaking her mind when in his presence while her sister has a gentler approach and does her utmost to keep the fragments of peace intact. The siblings painful past resurfaces by not only their father’s return but also due to an ambition he’s brought along with him that involves their generational family home, where past traumas have occurred both inside and to its inhabitants, and an acclaimed American actress, Rachel Kemp (played by a very curiously and appealingly cast Elle Fanning), who is seeking to re-discover herself.

Our own emotional baggage is often enough to carry let alone investing in someone else’s. Especially fictitious characters. So why do it?

The authenticity in writing, characterisation and acting throughout Sentimental Value resonates and can bring healing, or at least a path towards it, as well as potentially some solutions for audiences.

Though intended or not via the screenplay, one of the very true to life elements it conveys and reminds us of is how connection can be rendered and restored through different forms of communication, and broken beyond repair without it. How our love languages might be foreign to those we wish to convey such feelings towards, but how our intended recipient’s awareness and ability to recognise any signals can be key to the message being sent. Not to mention just how much harder life and life stuff is to deal with when you’re already carrying excess emotional baggage and don’t have the tools and people needed to properly unpack the burdening weight.

Those aforementioned facets of Sentimental Value are all class. It is a layered drama that I became psychologically, but not particularly emotionally, invested by where the deeper the layer, the more nuanced the film is. Some of its more firmly entrenched details, such as Gustav’s family history and how those events influence and shape the now, probably weren’t as clinical or fully comprehensible as I would have liked, but they are a subsidiary to what ultimately takes centre stage.

Overall, Sentimental Value is a worthwhile and quality drama that transparently extracts its characters strengths, flaws and vulnerabilities, and has us championing for the most positive outcome possible for each of them.

Moviedoc thanks Madman for the invitation to the screening of this film. 

Review by Leigh for Moviedoc

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