SENTIMENTAL VALUE (co-wri & dir by Joachim Trier, w/Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skaarsgard, Elle Fanning, 133mns, Norway/France/Germany/Denmark/UK, 2025)

This is a moving, deeply thought out piece of cinema. 

Gustav, an absentee film director father (Skaarsgard) returns to the lives of his two adult daughters to direct a movie in their childhood home dealing with trauma that affects them all.

Nora, Gustav's eldest daughter, is an acclaimed stage actress but refuses her father's request to play the starring role in the movie. Agnes, Gustav's younger daughter finds herself mediating between the two estranged artists. American star Rachel Kemp (Fanning), a fan of Gustav's work, agrees to step in. 

This is a kind of movie that already starts in a hole. A movie about movie people making a movie to deal with their undealt realities can be a self-important pretentious groaner.

And yet, strangely, it's a genre that has worked a surprising amount of times. Think Minnelli's THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, Godard's CONTEMPT, Fellini's 8 1/2, Fosse's ALL THAT JAZZ, Almodovar's BAD EDUCATION, Joanna Hogg's THE SOUVENIR PARTS 1 & 2, etc. 

SENTIMENTAL VALUE isn't as meta as some of the other titles. It does an impressive job dissolving the possible pretension and conflict of interest immediately and zeroing in on the family. 

The movie is in a more somber register than Trier's previous 2021 THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD (also starring Reinsve). And while VALUE has incredible moments of style, like WORST PERSON, it's a more stripped down affair.

Nora suffers panic attacks ahead of plays, fears intimacy, and mostly blames her father who left the family after a nasty divorce.

But we discover that Gustav himself had a mother who killed herself when he was 7. In the very house where he later tried to raise his family.

Both father and daughter have parent issues.

Agnes, the younger daughter, is not as emotionally paralyzed or fearful as Nora. But she still carries burdens and scars; something Gustav and Nora overlook.

Undertones of Ingmar Bergman abound including a seeming homage lighting shot that recalls 1966's PERSONA. 

There's a warmth and hope here though that Bergman rarely allowed himself. And the ending is quietly optimistic. 

I may be getting older or it may be because I myself have 3 daughters and 4 sisters. But the familial bonds and struggles here hit me harder now.

When you're single, movies like these are more theoretical. When you've started a family, you know you have accepted responsibility for how your actions and behaviors will prepare or stunt the next generation you've helped usher into an already hard world. 

A movie that reminds you of that responsibility is always a necessary thing.

Craig Hammill is the founder.programmer of Secret Movie Club