There\u2019s a Norwegian proverb, brent barn skyr ilden, that translates as: \u201cA burned child avoids the fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is at the heart of Joachim Trier\u2019s latest seriocomedy, Affeksjonsverdi (Sentimental Value), as the character Nora (Renate Reinsve<\/strong><\/a>) has been burned by her father, Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsg\u00e5rd).<\/p>\n A famed director, he abandoned both Nora and her\u00a0younger sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas)\u00a0when they were young, to better prioritise his career. He comes back into their lives at their mother\u2019s wake, and instead of emotional support, presents his eldest with a\u00a0proposition.<\/p>\n In a bid to revive his career and secure his artistic legacy, he\u2019s written an autobiographical screenplay. Considering Nora is a gifted stage actress, Gustav wants her to play the role of his mother, who took her own life in the family home in\u00a0Oslo. He even wants to shoot\u00a0the film within the girls\u2019 childhood home.<\/p>\n \u201cI wrote it for you and you\u2019re the only one who can play it,\u201d he tells his daughter about his comeback project, reaching out to her in the only way he knows how. Clumsily.<\/p>\n After little consideration, she refuses the part: \u201cI can\u2019t work with him. We can\u2019t really talk.\u201d<\/p>\n This prompts Gustav to cast up-and-coming Hollywood actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) instead, who he meets during a retrospective of his films. Not a move that will help mend the emotional rift with his daughters…<\/p>\n Sentimental Value <\/span> – Memento Distribution – Mubi <\/span><\/p>\n Four years after Reinsve won the Best Actress prize at Cannes for her performance in Trier\u2019s The Worst Person in the World<\/strong><\/a>,\u00a0the Norwegian\u00a0duo reunite for this tale that explores dysfunctional family dynamics. It\u2019s a winning combination, not just because Sentimental Value won this year\u2019s Cannes Grand Prix<\/strong><\/a> (essentially second place to the Palme d\u2019Or<\/strong><\/a>), but because Reinsve is, as always, a magnetic screen presence.<\/p>\n Convincing as a talented actress suffering anxiety attacks and having an affair with married actor Jakob (Anders Danielsen Lie, a regular Trier player), Reinsve manages to convey both desperation at the fact she has semi-followed in her father\u2019s artistic footsteps as well as an unaffected distance Nora clearly uses as\u00a0a defence mechanism. Like Julie in The Worst Person in the World or Elizabeth in Halfdan Ullmann T\u00f8ndel\u2019s Armand (2024),\u00a0Reinsve makes her characters come off as real, flawed and manages to hint at layers of buried trauma without toppling into mawkishness.<\/p>\n Sentimental Value <\/span> – Memento Distribution – Mubi <\/span><\/p>\n As for Skarsg\u00e5rd, he is fascinating as the estranged father you want to hate. It\u2019s just that the actor won\u2019t let you.<\/p>\n Gustav\u2019s\u00a0casting request becomes increasingly problematic considering this is a self-involved man who didn\u2019t watch his daughter grow up. He is also stubborn in his inability to directly address the sins of his past and instead seeks a form of reconciliation through art \u2013 his film seeming like the cathartic buoy he clings onto, convinced that reality can be mended through artificiality. And yet, through Skarsg\u00e5rd\u2019s talents as a performer, you never doubt his genuineness or his charming ham-handedness, as seen in a hilarious, cinephile-tickling scene in which he earnestly offers DVDs of The Piano Teacher and Irr\u00e9versible as an outrageously\u00a0inappropriate birthday present to Agnes\u2019 10-year-old son, Erik (Oyvind Hesjedal Loven). Again, this is a man who leans on art to attempt to connect with others on an emotional level. It\u2019s a frustrating trait that barely masks his inability to articulate his feelings, but not one you ever judge him for.<\/p>\n The fascinating dynamic between the father and daughter (as well as the moving scenes between Nora and Agnes) are not only down to the actors, but also a terrific script co-written by Trier and his longtime screenwriting partner Eskil Vogt. Both create nuanced characters and balance the intergenerational family trauma with healthy lashings of caustic humour throughout. Without sacrificing knotty relationships through comedy, Trier and Vogt ensure that Sentimental Value achieves true emotional resonance.<\/p>\n Sentimental Value <\/span> – Memento Distribution – Mubi <\/span><\/p>\n As\u00a0affecting and meticulously orchestrated as the film is, there are a few bum notes along the way.<\/p>\n Sentimental Value can get bogged down by an excessive amount of time spent on the production of Gustav\u2019s (Netflix financed) film, as well as several detours regarding the trauma the Borg family inherited from Nazi persecution. As vital as the background is and how generational history feeds into the importance of the house in this film, as a living thing that both internalises and externalises its occupants\u2019 states of being, a lot of this information feels a little too literal at times. Moreover, these digressions and some overt references to Ingmar Bergman \u2013 especially when the faces of the father and his two daughters morph into each other at one point – detract from the film\u2019s core: the importance of tenderness and the vulnerability necessary for relationships to surpass burns and begin to heal.<\/p>\n That said, and despite a predictable denouement you\u2019ll have guessed by the end of the first act, Sentimental Value does come together as mature ode to trying one\u2019s best and how, in some cases, life and art can converge to create something bigger. And hardened is your heart if that luminous and subtly devastating last shot doesn\u2019t tease your tear ducts.<\/p>\n As they say, etter regn kommer sol. \u201cAfter rain comes sun.\u201d<\/p>\n Affeksjonsverdi (Sentimental Value) premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It is currently out in cinemas in France and Belgium. It continues its theatrical rollout in Norway, Sweden and Greece this month and hits cinemas in US, UK and Germany in December.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There\u2019s a Norwegian proverb, brent barn skyr ilden, that translates as: \u201cA burned child avoids the fire.\u201d This is at the heart of Joachim Trier\u2019s latest seriocomedy, Affeksjonsverdi (Sentimental Value), as the character Nora (Renate Reinsve) has been burned by her father, Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsg\u00e5rd). A famed director, he abandoned both Nora and her\u00a0younger […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1999068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[362841,362840,362838,354965,354967,354966,362839,345851],"class_list":["post-1999067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-anders-danielsen-lie","tag-dysfunctional-family-dynamics","tag-gustav-borg","tag-joachim-trier","tag-renate-reinsve","tag-sentimental-value","tag-sister-agnes","tag-stellan-skarsgard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Euronews-Cultures-Film-of-the-Week-Sentimental-Value.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1999067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1999067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1999067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1999068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1999067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1999067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1999067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/span><\/div>\n
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