Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Sentimental Value’ on VOD, Another Triumph from Joachim Trier and Renate Reinsve

Joachim Trier does the near-impossible with Sentimental Value (now streaming on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video): direct a worthy follow-up to his 2021 triumph The Worst Person in the World. Both films star Renate Reinsve, who gives the most fascinating performances of anyone in the current cinema, and here, she shares the screen with Stellan Skarsgard in top form, with equally brilliant work from Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, making her international screen debut. The film rode a tsunami-like crest out of Cannes, where it won the Grand Prix, and although that wave of acclaim has shrunk a little here in the thick of awards season, it matters not, because this is one of the best films of 2025.

The Gist: Some films are touted for rendering a location with such observational detail that it becomes a “character.” But before we can even consider pondering the thought, Sentimental Value establishes this beautiful old Oslo home with a crack snaking up from the basement to the roof as a living, breathing thing, via Nora’s (Reinsve) voiceover. She once wrote a school essay intertwining the history of her family home with the emotions the house experiences – her great-grandfather died there, her grandmother was born there, her parents fought there as she and her younger sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) comforted each other in the hall, and the house was sad when it was empty and happy when it was full and it “missed some of the things” her father did once he left the family to throw himself into his career as an internationally renowned film director. 

At this present juncture, no true Borgs live in the house. In fact, no one lives in it anymore. Nora and Agnes’ mother has just passed away, and the house is now full of a lot of stuff the women need to divvy up, and a convenient place for the wake. The latter sees their father Gustav (Skarsgard) returning to the home and bringing an air of indeterminate estrangement with him. He’s welcome but he also might not be welcome and the house may be too small for his ego now; such is life. A few things to note: Gustav’s mother was imprisoned and tortured by Nazis, and hanged herself in the house when he was a boy. Follow that thread to Agnes, who’s a historian, with a husband and a nine-year-old son. Follow Gustav’s art to Nora, who’s now a stage actor of some renown. The threads tangle when Gustav seeks to reclaim the house as the set of his new film, his first in 15 years. But they get really knotted when he offers the lead role to Nora. He wrote it specifically for her, he says. She angrily declines. Is he trying to reconnect with his daughter, or is he just using her? Can’t tell; such is life, again.

Meanwhile, Nora contends with her near-crippling stage fright and fear of intimacy – she’s sleeping with one of her fellow production members, who’s married. Agnes visits the local archive and tearfully pages through the files detailing her grandmother’s imprisonment, and the trial of her torturer. Notably, Agnes had a role in one of Gustav’s films as a child, and vehemently denies his attempt to cast her son in the new one. At Gustav’s career retrospective in France, American movie star Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) is brought to tears by that very same film with Agnes in it, and connects with Gustav, who casts her in the role he offered Nora. Rachel’s involvement gets the project off the ground, and Gustav seems to be casting her as a surrogate daughter, too. He has her dye her hair the same shade as Nora’s. The ties that bind – they’re always too tight or too loose and it takes constant presence and adjustment as long as everyone’s willing and working and understanding that none of it is ever easy, ever.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Sentimental Value is a far stronger, deeper, more nuanced examination of the fraught intersection of life and art within the world of film than Jay Kelly. And Trier nods to Fellini and directly references Ingmar Bergman, especially Persona and Scenes from a Marriage.

Performance Worth Watching: It’s as if Reinsve’s face – wide-eyed, mysterious, almost whimsical – is a blank slate upon which we paint our own lives.

Sex And Skin: Just a little brief nudity.

Our Take: Late in the film, Trier apes Bergman with a series of dissolves featuring closeups of Reinsve, Skarsgard and Lilleaas’ faces, a poignant illustration of Sentimental Value’s themes: How individuals in a family are blurred-together assemblages of experiences and DNA, nature and nurture, values and ethics. Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt’s elegantly layered and nuanced screenplay intertwines scenes of collision and avoidance, be they accidental or intentional, sometimes fitting both into the same moment. And in those moments, we’re presented with ideas addressing how generational trauma, aging, eroding tradition and change itself affect the human psyche, leavened with insight and disarming moments of skewed comedy. 

Crucially, no one in the film behaves with the clear-cut motives of cookie-cutter movie characters. They’re all difficult, confused people, trying to make sense of their own contradictions, their place in the family and the world, the strengths and weaknesses of identity. They should look familiar, because in many ways, they are us. Trier brilliantly folds his themes into complex domestic drama and a depiction of the business of film and acting as a place of great art, and equally great artifice. Is Gustav making a film to atone for his past mistakes, or is it one last shot at glory for an artist in decline? Does Nora deny him out of spite or self-preservation? Does Agnes look back on the work that made a lauded actress erupt into tears (notably, Rachel asks Agnes for a selfie when they meet, not the other way around) with pride or regret? Yes, no, I don’t know, but the house still stands, and that long, irreparable crack is less of a foundational flaw than a scar of a survivor.

Our Call: Another triumph for Trier. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.