Sentimental Value — Review
Source: NEON
Sentimental Value ranks among the best films I’ve seen about fractured families, intergenerational trauma, and healing through art—and I’ve seen a lot of them. It doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel or do anything groundbreaking. In fact, the story is relatively predictable, but it’s executed with such masterful emotional precision and sincerity that it feels revelatory.
Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt’s script is beautifully nuanced and makes every character sympathetic. No one feels one-dimensional or reduced to a stereotype. Everyone is complicated, flawed, and achingly human. The cast brings so much quiet depth to their roles. The writing, in tandem with their performances, breathes so much life into these characters that they genuinely feel like real people.
The performances feel incredibly lived-in, especially from Renate Reinsve and Stellan Skarsgård, who bring so much raw vulnerability to their roles, capturing the unspoken tension and complex history that exists in real family dynamics. If I wasn’t already familiar with these actors, this movie could have convinced me they were actually family.
Source: NEON
These characters feel so specific, so intimately drawn, yet the emotions they’re working through feel so universal. It’s easy to find aspects of the characters that are relatable or elements of the story that resonate. There’s a level of emotional honesty on display here that feels so special and rare. And Trier expertly balances the melancholy with moments of humor. There’s one scene in particular that made me laugh harder than some of the comedies I’ve seen this year.
This film understands how distance builds up between people who still love each other, and how hard it is to bridge that gap. At times, it reminded me of Aftersun for its tender reflection on the way we try to make sense of and better understand the people we love. But it also reminded me of the works of Yasujirō Ozu and Ingmar Bergman in its restrained but poignant portrait of family. Sentimental Value is a cathartic and captivating film about family that feels unbelievably authentic and rich with emotion. It’s about how our upbringing shapes us, trying to make amends, confronting the hidden parts of ourselves we refuse to face, and struggling to connect with the people we’ve grown distant from. It's a story about loneliness, regret, and the desperate, sometimes fumbling attempts we make to reconnect. It’s also a gentle reminder about the importance of forgiveness, not just of others, but of ourselves.
Sentimental Value screens at the New York Film Festival starting September 30th before getting a limited release on November 7th.
