Sentimental Value: Quiet Desperation, Norwegian Style

133 minutes; R; directed by Joachim Trier

Critic’s grade: A-

(Catching up on 2025 films)

Nickel review: Hell is for children, Norwegian edition. Multigenerational trauma, illuminated via a master class in acting. Fully deserving of all those Oscar noms.

L to R: Renata Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleass

“Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way,” Pink Floyd noted in the song “Time,” from 1973’s “Dark Side of the Moon” album.

It’s the Norwegian way, too, apparently, according to the ennui-loaded silences alternating with emotion-charged outbursts in Joachim Trier‘s “Sentimental Value.”

The sometimes somber drama, however, is punctured with moments of levity and lightness, particularly in the exchanges between Nora (Renate Reinsve), a veteran stage actor, and her younger sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas).

The two, suffering from the recent loss of their mother, also struggle with the long shadow and psychological entanglements of their father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgard), a celebrated filmmaker who years ago apparently chose devotion to his career over his family.

Gustav has suddenly reappeared and asks Nora to star in a film — perhaps the last movie he will make — inspired in part by his mother, a Holocaust survivor who committed suicide when he was seven years old. And he wants to shoot the movie in the family home, where her death took place all those years ago. But it’s not about his mother, he insists.

Enter a popular young American actress, Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), tapped to play the lead in Gustav’s film when Nora opts out of taking the role. Cue the churning of complex emotional currents in a slow-burning narrative that allows all four principals to demonstrate their considerable acting chops.

Trier nevertheless doesn’t quite dig deeply enough into how and why these long-standing domestic issues have impacted the long-absent father and his daughters, and the kind of story that Gustav wants to tell with his latest production.

Trier’s movie about moviemaking also makes use of a framing device, positioning the family home, a sprawling, majestic Victorian house, as a living thing, a nominally benevolent container that watches over and remembers the lives of those who inhabit the place over the decades.

The concept is introduced at the film’s start and largely downplayed until later, when we look through the window of an upstairs bedroom, at Gustav, down below. He’s seated outside at a table, perhaps pondering the trauma that he has created for his offspring and ultimately, the nature of his legacy, as a parent and as an artist.