In July 2025, Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård appeared at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. He was there for the screening of his latest film, “Sentimental Value,” written and directed by the gifted Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier. During an event held in his honor, he was asked about previous professional collaborations. When Skarsgård was still relatively early in his career, at about 35, he appeared in a theatrical production of August Strindberg’s “A Dream Play,” directed by Ingmar Bergman. He was left with unpleasant memories of working with the brilliant creator, whom Skarsgård described as a “nice director,” a sour understatement if there ever was one, but also as a “tyrannical and manipulative” person. Skarsgård did not forget to mention Bergman’s youthful fondness for Adolf Hitler, or the fact, which Bergman confessed in his autobiography, that he burst into tears when he heard the Nazi tyrant had died.
Clearly, a great artist can be a deeply problematic person in ideological and personal aspects of his life. But considering the film Skarsgård came to promote, and the character he plays in it, his settling of accounts with Bergman almost invites a psychoanalytic reading. There is a connection between “Sentimental Value” and Bergman’s works dealing with the painful dynamics between parents who are also artists and their children, as in “Through a Glass Darkly,” and with long-buried family baggage, as in “Cries and Whispers.” In tone, Trier’s film can be placed somewhere between Bergman’s stern approach and a “Bergman lite” film in the style of Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters.”
“Sentimental Value” is a drama with emotionally difficult scenes, but also touches of humor. It patiently exposes the characters’ vulnerabilities and shows the complexity of the relationships between them. In his recent films, “Oslo, August 31st” and “The Worst Person in the World,” Trier became Norway’s leading filmmaker, and “Sentimental Value” is most likely his best film. The film won the Jury Prize, the second-most important award, at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for best international feature.
Skarsgård plays Gustav Borg, a 70-year-old film director whose name recalls Isak Borg, the elderly protagonist and father estranged from his son in Bergman’s “Wild Strawberries.” Gustav Borg had a very limited presence in the lives of his two daughters after he divorced their mother, a psychotherapist named Sissel, played by Marianne Vassbotn Klasson. His absence opened a deep wound in their souls, especially that of Nora, played by Renate Reinsve, the elder daughter, who became a successful but unstable actress. Some viewers may dismiss in advance any interest in a film that gives a central place to a character who can be labeled a narcissist. But the screenplay by Trier and his regular collaborator Eskil Vogt shapes Gustav in all his complexity: an egocentric artist endowed with sharpness and sensitivity of perception. He was devoted to his work, but now, 15 years after his last film, he carries the vulnerability that comes with age. That vulnerability drives him to make a personal film about family circles connecting his childhood to the present, and his mother’s image to that of his daughter. Skarsgård gives one of his finest performances here.
From ‘Sentimental Value’
(Photo: PR)
The film begins with a sequence in which an omniscient narrator discusses the family home and a text Nora wrote for school as a child, describing the family’s life from the house’s own point of view. The house is the arena in which generations of the Borg family lived: the place where Gustav’s mother killed herself when he was a child, where Gustav lived with Sissel during their marriage, where Sissel and their two daughters remained after he left, and where the younger daughter, Agnes, played by Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, now lives with her husband and son. The house will continue to function throughout the film not only as a central setting, but also as a space that traps within it the complexity of the family ties. On one wall, there is a deep crack reaching up to the ceiling, a physical and symbolic presence of the painful things that happened there and remain embedded in the place.
It is no coincidence that the title “Sentimental Value” appears at the opening against the backdrop of that crack, before moving to Nora’s face as she is in the grip of paralyzing stage fright on a premiere night. It is an opening that begins the film’s exploration of the ways life is connected to, and processed through, art. Later we learn that Gustav almost never bothered to watch his daughter act. On the one occasion he came to the theater where she was performing in “Medea,” he left during the intermission, and he never watched the popular television series in which she appeared. Nora’s stage fright seems to stem from the shaky foundations created by the father-director as an absent spectator.
Gustav knows almost nothing about Nora’s life. He maintains some connection, though a very superficial one, with Agnes. But he does come to the “memorial gathering” after Sissel’s funeral, after many years in which he had not set foot in the family home. The purpose of the visit is not to pay his respects to his ex-wife, but to arrange a meeting with Nora. In their conversation, he offers her the lead role in his new film, a role he wrote specifically for her and is convinced only she can play. The furious Nora rejects his offer outright.
Gustav attends the Deauville Film Festival for a screening of one of his early films. Watching it with admiration is an American movie star named Rachel Kemp, played by Elle Fanning, creating an opportunity for collaboration. With her backing, the film can be made. Still, even with all of Kemp’s goodwill and good intentions, and she is presented as an empathetic and sensitive character, it is not clear she can replace the person for whom the role was written.
The movement toward filming in the family home advances several plotlines. The motives of the mother character in the film within the film must be deciphered, a challenge that grows increasingly burdensome for Kemp. At the same time, Agnes, “the stable sister,” investigates the background of her grandmother’s character by reading archival materials from the World War II period. There is also the dynamic between the two sisters, in which Agnes, the younger one, is the sister who knows Nora closely and looks after her well-being.
“Sentimental Value” is the third Trier film in which Reinsve appears. His previous film, “The Worst Person in the World,” for which she won the acting prize at Cannes, was her breakthrough into an international career. Her talent is well known and is clearly evident in the complex, exposed role of Nora. But Lilleaas also does very impressive work with a less colorful character. In the scenes in which the two act together, especially the scene in which they sort through furniture in the family home and the scene in which they read the script together, there are very beautiful moments.
While a director like Bergman would not have hesitated to remain in a place beyond repair, that is not Trier’s path. The characters are not forced by a superficial formula that erases the weight of the past, but art can be the meeting point, and the place where things left unsaid can be processed. “Sentimental Value” is a complex, beautiful and moving film.