Sentimental Value (Affeksjonsverdi, 2025) ‘Cannes’ Movie Review

Expectations couldn’t possibly be higher for Trier’s follow-up to “The Worst Person in the World,” and if initial word-of-mouth is to be believed, “Sentimental Value” (Original title: Affeksjonsverdi) has more than delivered. Maybe—just maybe—the overwhelming sweep of Palme d’Or buzz (culminating in an eventual second-place Grand Prix win) and annual NEON exhalation might be due in part to Trier’s chosen approach that has resonated with the artistic crowd: healing through the artistic process.

Yeah, this is gonna be one of those movies, and given Trier’s Bergmanian touches to the overlap of life and art, it might not be presumptuous to compare “Sentimental Value,” in some way, to Mia Hansen-Løve’s own art-reckoning project “Bergman Island.” In Trier’s case, the attempted reconciliation takes on his usual millennial quirk in such a way that sometimes risks diverting the emotional power of the ideas he’s working with—the same issue clung to his previous film—but like Hansen-Løve’s film, “Sentimental Value” posits that if art is a living, breathing thing, then like life itself, there may be no satisfying resolutions to be found at all.

Taking the lead for Trier’s view of millennial angst, once again, is Renate Reinsve as Nora, a theatre actress who, alongside her estranged sister Anna (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), is forced to reckon with the sudden passing of her mother. Reentering the picture is the pair’s father Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), a famous film director who returns to make amends with his daughters after a prolonged absence that had marked their childhoods.

Gustav’s return, it would seem, isn’t all that altruistic, as he quickly corners Nora with a script for a new film—his first in ages—professing it to be the greatest thing he’s ever written; it’s a largely autobiographical affair depicting the eventual suicide of his own mother, and he wants his own daughter to take on the role. What this says about how he perceives his spawn is just the first of many questions on Nora’s mind, but one thing that’s clear is that she wants nothing to do with this project, no matter how achingly personal this venture appears to be.

A still from Sentimental Value (Affeksjonsverdi, 2025)

Communicating these complicated feelings is a troupe that finds in Trier and Eskil Vogt’s words the space to turn every trepidatious glance into a story spanning eons. Reinsve, when given something to do (which sadly isn’t as often as one might expect), remains entirely lustrous as Trier’s muse, but it’s primarily Skarsgård who finds himself afforded the most space to bring confused dimension to a man whose past motivations are never made resolute, either to himself or to us.

It’s the ambiguity of this motivation that works both for and against the film’s ability to latch onto you, but it never feels unreal (despite some of Trier’s quirkier touches, like all the sudden cuts-to-black as though the film were initially structured in the same “12 chapters” format as the director’s preceding film).

“Sentimental Value” rides high on the fraught chemistry between Skarsgård and Reinsve, to the point where our inability to fully reconcile what’s going on between them and what it all means only serves to reinforce the notion that working through this artistic undertaking—for both the characters in the film and the viewers watching it—is the only way one might even come close to an answer.

More likely than not, though, answers of any kind remain elusive, and as such, “Sentimental Value” occasionally strains to realign all of its perspectives into a full view of what it’s trying to say about therapy through art aside from the fact that sometimes, you’ve just got to do it. When Elle Fanning enters the picture as a Hollywood actress primed to take on the role written for Nora, it’s clear that her performance is one given more life by the interpretation than what’s on the page.

Joachim Trier’s lightness of touch for such labyrinthine subject matter may leave “Sentimental Value” feeling somewhat incomplete, but the atmosphere is certainly one created by design, and curated with care to express that disarray of domestic estrangement that so clearly fascinates him. And, for whatever else it’s worth, I can’t help but give Trier extra points for the only time I’ve ever seen “The Piano Teacher” used as a comedic punchline—and a damn good one, at that!