Sentimental Value (2025) What I’ve Been Watching Lately, Part 1

by Len Weiler

As I’ve been out of town a lot and/or otherwise engaged over the last several weeks, I haven’t been out to the movies. But there are a bunch of films I meant to write about earlier that are worth telling you about, some of which I’ve seen again in the interim. Some have even been nominated for Oscars and all of them are now available for home viewing, so I think they’ll be of interest. This is the first of a series of several posts about such movies.

The Norwegian movie Sentimental Value is a “small” but excellent family drama with  an intricately woven story. It is ostensibly centered on a house that’s been in the Borg family for four generations; but while the intended  “story-about-a house” theme does not hold up all that well dramatically, the house is definitely a character in the film.  Essentially, the story is of three generations of the Borg family who have lived in the house,  told through the lives and emotional connections (broken and otherwise) among and between the surviving adult Borgs:  the  talented, emotionally troubled stage actress Nora (Renate Reinsve); her august, aging movie director father, Gustav ( Stellan Skarsgård); and Nora’s younger sister (and best friend), Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas). 

Nora’ s point of view is the starting point. Onstage she is brilliant - once she overcomes her paralyzing stage fright. Offstage, she’s something of a mess. Nora wonders how it is that she’s so fucked-up (her words) - suffering from crippling anxiety and depression, unable to sustain a romantic relationship - while her sister Agnes has such a normal, relatively unfraught life as a wife and mother with a satisfying career (she’s  a historian). Nora blames her dad for the deep hole she feels in her life.

When she and Agnes were kids, Gustaf divorced their mom, Sissel, freeing himself to pursue his directorial career in the wider world outside Norway. Nora and Agnes experienced this as being abandoned by their father, which was pretty much the case. (As a young girl, Agnes actually acted  in one of Gustav’s films, not out of ambition, but just to get his attention. After filming, however that attention evaporated.) Nora and Agnes remained in the family house (still owned by Gustav) raised exclusively by Sissel, who has died recently. 

Now, with his illustrious career in decline,  Gustav shows up unexpectedly with a newly written screenplay, which he sees as his crowning masterpiece (if he can get it produced). It's  based on the experiences of  his mother (Nora’s and Agnes’s grandmother) during Norway’s occupation by the Nazis and her subsequent suicide (in the Borg house) when he was a young boy. He has come to offer Nora the lead in his movie, which he pitches as a career defining opportunity which, in fact, he wrote especially for her. However, unwilling to forgive Gustav for his abandonment, she declines. They can’t work together, she says. They’ve never even been able to talk to one another.  Disappointed but undaunted, Gustav offers the role to up-and-coming American actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), who is thrilled to be able to work with a European auteur on such a project. Based on Rachel’s celebrity, Netflix agrees to finance the project. Gustav says he wants to shoot the film not on a soundstage but actually in the family home. 

None of this easy for anyone. Rachel struggles to fit into a deeply personal Norwegian story.  Gustav turns himself inside out to make it work for her, to work with the Netflix suits,  and to somehow reconcile with his estranged daughters.  Nora tries to pull her life together while pushing away complicated feelings about her father and his new movie project. Agnes is initially conciliatory but becomes outraged when Gustav wants to cast her son in the movie playing himself as a child, not least because, in a typical Gustav move, he pitches the idea to the boy before mentioning it to Agnes.  

The story is both interesting and engaging, as are the multiple, interesecting themes explored by director (and co-writer) Joachim Trier, among them memory, grief, the Nazi occupation, aging, the creative process, family and, yes, sentimentality.  

By and large, critics rank Sentimental Value among very best movies of 2025, as evidenced by its high scores on review aggregation sites like Metacritic ("Metascore" of 86 – “Universal Acclaim”) and Rotten Tomatoes (“Tomatometer” score: 97% favorable ). It is also a fan favorite – with a high IMDB score of 7.9 and a Rotten Tomatoes “Popcornmeter” rating  of 94%.  It has been nominated for nine Oscars , including Best Picture of the Year, Best International Feature, Best Director, Best Actress (Reinsve), Best Supporting Actor (Skarsgård),  and two (!) nominations for Best Supporting Actress (Lilleaas and Fanning) .  At the 2026 European Film Awards a few weeks back, the movie picked up six prestigious prizes, including  European Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor,  and Best Screenplay.  

As you’d surmise from the above, Sentimental Value features phenomenal acting. Renate Reinsve is spot-on fabulous as Nora. She first came to international prominence playing the lead in Trier’s The Worst Person in the World (2021) for which she received the best actress award at Cannes. Here, playing off the formidable Stellan Skarsgård on the one hand and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas  on the other (both of which are nominated for Oscars themselves), you can’t take your eyes off her - as she walks the tightrope between Nora’s work as an actress working from scripts (at which she is excels) and her life offstage as a person, at which she feels she is failing. 

Skarsgård is one of the great actors of his generation, and his Gustav is a marvelous piece of work. Although Gustav has no doubt been a terrible father, Skarsgård gives us a sympathetic portrait of his other side as well - an aging auteur striving to remain relevant, to maintain his dignity and, age notwithstanding, to create something meaningful. As Agnes,  Lilleaas is a wonderful counterpoint to Reinsve’s Nora, soulful, inciteful, comforting, solid. Together, the two of them have perhaps the most intimate, touching moment in the movie: just the two them lounging in a bedroom talking about their lives, their relationship with Gustav and what they have meant to each other  And Fanning, as the American outsider, believably shows Rachel to be  more than just a pretty face, but a genuinely committed actress in a fish-out-of-water situation, trying to get it right for her director, but acknowledging not only her discomfort, but his as well.

Sentimental Value is the whole package: a solid drama; with memorable acting and seemingly spontaneous dialogue (like the best Linklater films); a tight, deeply involving story; and top-rank (unshowy) cinematography.  There are some misty-eyes moments and, for me at least, a quite satisfying ending.   In short, it’s a real gem.  Highly recommended.

2 hours 13 minutes In Norwegian (subtitled) and English

Grade:  A-

While Sentimental Value  is still showing theatrically in some locations, (which is a lovely way to see it), it’s now also available to purchase or rent digitally on multiple platforms including Prime Video, AppleTV, and Fandango At Home (formerly Vudu).