We can't really talk.
A Sentimental Value recommendation.
Welcome to Something New, a newsletter about the human curation of movies, music, books, and everything else worthwhile.
Nora Borg (Renate Reinsve) is a successful stage actor, when she can manage to get herself onto the stage. She returns to her multi-generational home for a funeral, where she meets up with her sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) – happily married with a young song – and, unexpectedly, her father Gustav (Stellan Skarsgaard), who has been divorced and absent for many years. Gustav is a filmmaker, though long out of practice, and he has a new script and a producer who will make it. But he needs one thing: Nora to accept the lead role, since he wrote the entire thing for her, and maybe about her.
I think Joachim Trier might be the best filmmaker working right now. He is a five-tool player1: he hits the viewer with every nook and cranny of the artform – his casting and direction of actors is superb; his camera work is affecting and elegant; his soundtracks deftly guide our experiences alongside the story; the editing adds to the impact of script and performance; and the script itself is taught, moving, and rarely overbearing. Everything in Trier’s last two films (this one, and 2021’s The Worst Person in the World) is deeply considered, an aspect of filmmaking that seems desperately fleeting right now. The bonds that Trier has with his actors and crew are so strong, and nothing is better than being able to trust a filmmaker, and you can better trust that filmmaker when they work with a crew of talented craftsman and performers multiple times in a row.
I want to take a moment to identify people whose work with Trier helps elevate these movies into the highest tier of work being made right now:
Cinematographer Kasper Tuxen creates beautiful images, and the film thematically involves the playing of shadow and light within a family house, through windows and trees, dancing around the room. Tuxen makes it feel alive.
Production designer Jørgen Stangebye Larsen creates wonderful homes befitting each character and each family, and builds the world in which we find our action and emotion.
The costumes by Ellen Ystehede are always so fucking cool, and are exactly what I aspire to be wearing all the time, and really help bring the characters to life.
I want to talk with more depth about the work of editor Olivier Bugge Coutté, who is here again after working with Trier for his entire feature career. The editing in this movie is remarkable, effective, and manipulative. I love how long we (sometimes) linger on a character, when they should be speaking or responding or emoting, but instead they languish, and we languish with them. I love the cutting between major segments, which cuts to black before coming back in on the next shot – an editing move that we rarely see in film, but can really control the pacing of our experience. I love the montages before each act, cutting between eras effortlessly to connect our characters to their pasts, their futures, to each other. Editing is the reason that movies can be so powerful, and it was refreshing to see some playfulness and inventiveness in this effort, and it results in something memorable.
There is a moment in the film I have to shout-out specifically, without giving anything away, that was dazzling, and quite shocking: a short moment of daring film-making that steps outside of the narrative to visualize and literalize several relationships, and it was thrilling to have it dropped into this movie over half-way in. It struck me much like the musical time-traveling sequence in SINNERS did: a filmmaker deciding to abandon safety and simplicity for a few moments to make artistic connections and interpretations. Only elite filmmakers can take chances like this and not fall on their faces. You’ll know this moment when you see it.
Finally, a big shout-out to Coutté and Tuxen, who also edited and lensed Mike Mills’ Beginners, one of my favorite movies that has a ton of emotional exploration in common with Sentimental Value.
In front of the camera, Renate Reinsve is a master of her craft. Twice now she has proven to be able to hold us through any scene, any feeling, any ask that we or a script might have. Some of my favorite moments here are those when her character Nora has slumped into a particular state-of-mind about 2 acts through the film, and Nora shrinks and pales, without any announcement of reason or admission, and Reinsve simply shifts the entire character and story with body language and energy and those informative eyes. She is hilarious, she is devastating, she is simply the best.
Reinsve doesn’t quite lead this film, as its screen time and script have interests in all three members of its nuclear family, and each actor/character brings a full life and nuance. Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas is this film’s revelation, just as Reisnve was in Worst Person. Lilleaas plays the younger sister, who doesn’t quite get the direct conflict with the patriarch, but rather slides into a middling position among the three, her perspective unique. Lilleaas matches and counters Reinsve and Stellan Skarsgaard beat for beat, moment for moment, while also standing out on and for her own. This character type has a way of being backgrounded and hollowed in a more focused, less nuanced version of a nuclear family story, but the script and Lilleaas’ execution leave her as one of the more memorable characters in film this year.
Stellan Skarsgaard’s casting was one of the few bumps in the road for me. His presence, and his charm, are so strong and understood by most viewers these days, that his being in a foreign film alongside stunning actors who American film audiences aren’t (as) familiar with is noticeable. Reinsve is, of course, a known commodity after the success of Trier’s last film, but she is only in her sophomore effort of leading an internationally acclaimed film, while Skarsgaard is credited 161 times on Letterbox’d. His performance does escape the meta-ness of his casting, a burden that of course can’t be held against him, but only after the film, and script, start to cast a generous and inquisitive glance his way in the second and third acts.
Elle Fanning also stands out as nearly stunt casting, portraying an up-and-coming American starlet who is eager to work with real directors. This isn’t a Hollywood bimbo coming to steal daddy and ruin the holiday, however. Fanning’s Rachel Kemp only modern annoyance of stardom is her wacky duo of agents that trail behind her, carrying her phone and schedule and ties to Brands and Studios back home in America. Otherwise, Kemp is an honest and earnest performer who has found real connection to a piece of work, and its creator, and is given the chance to create something alongside him. She turns off of her rising track to spend some time at a standstill, to try and make something with depth and reality. Fanning’s performance is great, and the baggage of the actor’s previous stardom does not hinder the experience at all, especially – as with Skarsgaard – when you get the time to have the character really reveal themself to you.
What stood out most was the screenplay, and its clear, intentional inclusion of both text and subtext. The movie allows you to gaze upon its subjects, to ask yourself What is she thinking? And then it gives you time-traveling sequences of direct information – artfully edited and not exactly linear – between each act of the story that lets you see inciting events and sources of strife. The movie pulls back all of its curtains, and shines light into its cracks and corners. Even armed with insight, however, we still never know why anyone does what they do, why some things define us and others don’t, why we let some things change us and keep others from getting in. This is a movie that gives us answers we think we want, but leaves us searching desperately for what exactly we are watching.
This feels like a film for human beings. There’s no hook, no genre. The Worst Person in the World was taking some big narrative swings, landing heavily on the viewer’s psyche. Sentimental Value isn’t waging as many wars. It’s people trying to figure out how to say what they want to say, and how to talk to the people they want to be talking with. It is frustrating to watch, yet wonderful to walk alongside each character’s path towards understanding, however far they get (or don’t). It’s a masterfully made film, one that understands control of the material and the audience, and propels you through a story. I found it moving, open-ended, and full of life. I think you will, too.
Thank you, as always, for reading. As most years in movies go, things take time to really get going. I think we are finally there! So many exciting things are in theaters right now, or available to stream. Time to dig in2!
I’m glad you’re here.
Further Reading:
SINNERS is a MOVIE Movie
Welcome to Something New, a newsletter about the human curation of movies, music, books, and everything else worthwhile.
Where to find the things we talked about:
Sentimental Value (2025)
In theaters now!
The Worst Person in the World (2021)
Rent wherever you rent movies, including Movie Madness!
Stream, for free with a library card, on Kanopy!
Sinners (2025)
In theaters now!
Rent wherever you rent movies, including Movie Madness!
Stream on HBO Max.
Beginners (2011)
Rent wherever you rent movies, including Movie Madness!
This is a baseball reference. You do not need to learn anything new about baseball. Please continue with your day.
Dig into Christmas movies from 1954, and continue to ignore contemporary cinema.