Sentimental Value, a Nordic family drama
- Lori Ann Reinhall
- Jan 14
- 6 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Confronting ghosts of the past to find an authentic path forward
In recent years, Nordic cinema has come of age, with a string of award-winning films. One of the biggest names in the Danish-Norwegian director Joachim Trier, whose latest release Sentimental Value (Norwegian: Affeksjonsverdi, 2025) has swept film festivals worldwide and is short-listed for an Oscar in three categories. An international production with a script written by Trier and Eskil Vogt in Norwegian, Swedish, and English, this film offers something fresh and new, while carrying a timeless message.
Sentimental Value is the story of a father and his two daughters. We come to understand how their family trauma, passed down through generations, hinders their fulfillment, both professional and personal, while addressing the age-old dichotomy of art and life.
Veteran Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård plays Gustav Borg, an acclaimed film director, who sees his career in decline. Charming, but overly ambitious and narcissistic, we learn that he chose to put his career above his family—at a very high cost. He divorced from his wife, Sissel, leaving her in Oslo with their two young daughters, Nora and Agnes, as he made his claim to fame in Sweden.
The movie’s plot unfolds years later after Sissel’s death, when father and daughters are reunited at the family house for her memorial wake. The house, an imposing example of “dragon-style” architecture from around the turn of the 20th century, emerges as a metaphor for what is happening with this family. With its medieval Viking ornamentation juxtaposed on the Romantic chalet-style structure, it is at once cozy and ominous—and indeed, we soon discover that it is haunted by ghosts of the past.
Over the years Sissel, a psychotherapist, had seen scores of traumatized patients there, while her own house was not in order. While everyone has had a roof over their head in the stately and comfortable surroundings, there has been little happiness in the family.
No one seems to have suffered more than Nora, the oldest of the two daughters, played by Renate Reinsve, who came to international acclaim in Trier’s The Worst Person in the World (Norwegian: Verdens verste menneske, 2021).
Like Ibsen’s Nora in A Doll’s House (Norwegian: Et dukkehjem, 1879), she is only acting her way through life and will have to set out on a journey of self-realization. Successful on the stage, she is adored by her audiences—but they cannot see into her inner life. She is a wounded child, afraid of true intimacy, and she finds herself looking for love in the wrong places. Her relationship with a married man feels safe, but it only leads to more abandonment and loneliness.
Nora’s anguish is so deep that she has tried to take her own life, and the theme of suicide runs through the film. We learn in a flashback scene that her grandmother, a survivor of the Gestapo concentration camp at Grini, died by hanging years later after her release, leaving her little son, Gustav, behind. The tragedy of the grandmother’s death underlines the notion that the weight of the past can come back to haunt us at any time in our lives.
Gustav, too, has been emotionally crippled, but in time, he is forced to confront his many regrets. Like his daughter Nora, Gustav is also on a journey of self-realization. One is reminded of Ibsen’s final play, When We Dead Awaken (Norwegian: Når vi døde vågner, 1899). It tells the story of the aging sculptor Arnold Rubek, who not only worries about his art becoming obsolete but also comes to know that the price of his art has been his own happiness and that of those closest to him.
In the Ibsen play, it is too late for Rubek, but as we are drawn into the story of Sentimental Value, we hope it won’t be too late for Gustav. To make his comeback and to reconnect with Nora, he writes a masterpiece manuscript explicitly for her. But for his wounded daughter, a part in a movie cannot make up for a lifetime of loss; she refuses to read the script.
Gustav turns to Rachel Kemp, a young American film star, played by Elle Fanning. Beautiful, rich, and famous, she realizes that she has been typecast into superficial, shallow roles. She is ready to set out on her own journey and sees her connection with the aging director as an opportunity to break free into more serious and meaningful art.
But once Rachel gets to know Gustav’s family, she realizes that the role will not work for her. As an outsider and an American, she will never be able to relate to the character in a way that is fully authentic, so she withdraws. And while she will not make the film with Gustav, she has learned something about her art along the way.
Nora’s younger sister, Agnes, played Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, is also on a quest to understand herself and her family. As a child, she played in one her father’s films, the one experience that brought her close to him. But this closeness was short-lived. She chose another path in life as a historian.
Agnes tries to make sense of the past by digging into the World War II archives. She reads about the torture that her grandmother suffered and how it led to her death. The younger sister is more grounded than Nora and builds a stable home life with her husband and son. Her love provides a block of solid foundation in the family’s otherwise troubled house.
Yet, the overall feeling of Sentimental Value is dark and deep. Up until the very end, we don’t know if things will end well or not. Yet there are lighter moments to make the existential angst bearable. The comic relief functions as a coping mechanism, helping us bridge the gap between reality and ideal.
Much of this humor is found in the lively dialogue, an everyday discourse that is natural and believable. After a couple of hours, you feel like you know the family; you have started to bond with them and care about what will happen to them. Skarsgård, with his wry sense of delivery, is at his very best (he received the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor for his performance), and Reinsve takes on her new role with the same sensitivity and nuance, carrying the film on equal footing with him. And unlike in many other pan-Nordic productions, for speakers of the Nordic languages, it makes sense that they are speaking both Swedish and Norwegian, since the linguistic divergence is supported by the plot.
This contemporary Nordic family drama has stayed with me for days and weeks, and like an Ibsen play, it will probably remain with me forever, as I continue to ponder the questions the film raises. Ultimately, it asks us what in life really matters. One becomes immersed in the complexity of the relationships in this family and understands that their journey will be long and ongoing. As the film’s characters define what is of sentimental value to them, Sentimental Value will take you on your own journey to examine your own life. It is a film well worth seeing.
Sentimental Value is now available for home viewing through major online streaming services, including Neon, who released the film in North America.
See an official trailer for Sentimental Value:
