Genre

Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes, is an elliptical and elusive family drama, which lingers long after it’s finished. Unlike The Worst Person in the World, his previous release, it’s not divided into chapters, but it has a similar sense of fragmentation, asking the audience to make sense of silences, truncated scenes and everything that remains unspoken in the relationship between parent and child. In particular, it asks us to greet acts of public parental grandiloquence when scepticism, especially when they occur later in life. At its core are three characters – Nora Borg, a successful stage actress living in Oslo, played by Renate Reinsve; Agnes, Nora’s sister, played by Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas; and their father, Gustav Borg, an acclaimed film director, played by Stellan Skarsgard. When Nora and Agnes’ mother, and Gustav’s ex-wife, dies, Gustav returns to their family home for the first time in many years. It’s clear that he hasn’t cultivated a relationship with his daughters, despite the fact that Agnes played a child role in one of his most acclaimed films. Gustav returns with a proposition: he has written a screenplay that he wants to film in their family home, with