Sentimental Value is a raw study of generational trauma

Sentimental Value is a talky film about artists who don’t know how to talk. Luckily, the artists behind Sentimental Value are erudite about the process. On a sofa in a London hotel, the three female leads of Joachim Trier’s ensemble drama are describing to me their most terrifying day on set. It involves a monologue read aloud twice, once by Elle Fanning to a nodding Stellan Skarsgård, and again by Renate Reinsve to a crying Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas.

“It was a very, very scary day,” says Reinsve, a 37-year-old Norwegian actor who also starred in Trier’s The Worst Person in the World. “I could sense that everyone was scared. We were shooting on film. We had to get it.”

The text is written by a filmmaker, Gustav Borg (Skarsgård), who deliberately layered the writing with multiple meanings. It’s a make-or-break moment that defines the film. It’s also the main image in most of the marketing: Reinsve and Lilleaas tearfully embracing each other in bed.

When Fanning’s character, a Hollywood actor called Rachel, performs the exact same words in an earlier scene, it produces a different kind of crying. “I put a lot of pressure on myself,” says Fanning. “My character’s pushing the emotion out. She’s giddy, and is like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have talent. I actually am maybe good at this!’”

In Sentimental Value, everyone is an artist, a traumatised relative of an artist, or both. Gustav, a director with a hint of Bergman to his autobiographical approach, is a charmer with journalists, cinematographers, and young actresses on the film festival circuit. He’s also a man who walked out on his two daughters, Nora (Reinsve) and Agnes (Lilleaas), when they were children. After the family’s mother dies, Gustav returns to their Oslo home, bringing with him a script for Nora to star in. When Nora refuses, Gustav casts English-speaking Rachel in her place, forming his own Vertigo scenario: he tries to turn Rachel into his daughter for the screen.

As per usual, Trier rehearsed with his cast, and then rewrote the script in response to their improvisations and input. “It gives you ownership,” says Lilleaas, 37, who co-starred with Reinsve in 2015’s Women in Oversized Men's Shirts. “It opens different rooms in your mind and body.”

“We talk with Joachim during the rehearsals, and it creates a memory,” says Fanning. “When we’re filming, we know that Joachim remembers all these personal things we talked about, and it’s like we’re telepathically communicating with him.”

“He chases moments that are truthful,” says Reinsve. “Everything is conditioned for us to be raw, and to lose control. Small things happen in us, and we don’t completely understand what happened.”

Perhaps contributing to its Cannes success (it won the Grand Prix, effectively second place), Sentimental Value is stuffed with industry jokes: it has gags about Michael Haneke, junkets, and Netflix; its plot hinges on casting politics. I note that Reinsve dropped out of Weapons and was replaced by an American actor, Julia Garner, just like in Sentimental Value. “I am preparing to watch [Weapons],” says Reinsve. “I’ve only watched three scary movies in my life: The Ring, Hereditary, and The Eyes. I don’t sleep after them.” (We work out she thus skipped Fanning in The Neon Demon. Fanning insists it’s “not totally scary” if you can handle blood.)

Things are recurring in the world. What we need is tenderness, and finding love for each other. It’s talking about how difficult it is to actually understand another perspective. It’s really hard. But it’s necessary

However, the movie business is only a backdrop for a familial drama that’s shaped by generational trauma: Gustav’s mother, a Holocaust survivor, killed herself in the family home, a building that stores secrets, tensions, and tragedies. It reminds me of Worst Person ending with face masks, establishing that it’s a 2021 film shot during Covid. What makes Sentimental Value a film for 2025?

“It’s a movie we need,” says Reinsve. “There are so many polarised opinions against each other. This is about how we can reconcile, and not only in family.”

“There’s more focus nowadays on generational trauma,” says Lilleaas.

“But we’re still forgetting a lot of recent history,” says Reinsve. “Things are recurring in the world. What we need is tenderness, and finding love for each other. It’s talking about how difficult it is to actually understand another perspective. It’s really hard. But it’s necessary.”

“Nothing is tied up in a perfect bow,” says Fanning. “Not even our film. I don’t know if it can be solved.”

The mostly Norwegian-language script was written by Trier and Eskil Vogt, a duo who have penned all six of Trier’s movies. While Trier was offered Hollywood projects after Worst Person’s Oscar success, he’s remained in Norway for an arthouse drama that succeeds on all levels: it’s smart, funny, brilliantly acted, and once again showcases Trier’s gift at composing beautiful images that don’t distract from the drama.

In a separate interview, I meet Skarsgård and Trier. Trier tells me that, when he and Vogt were writing Gustav, they noticed he was a “complicated asshole”. To counter that, Trier reached out to Skarsgård, a legendary 74-year-old Swedish actor whose CV ranges from six Lars von Trier films to Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again! and Dune.

“I knew the story would go from the daughters’ perspective of Gustav, which is full of disappointment, and turn into this human story from inside his vulnerability,” says Trier. “I needed an actor who had that range, and wasn’t vain. Stellan has no vanity. He wants to show characters that are imperfect.”

Skarsgård has no vanity?

“As an actor, you don’t have any vanity,” Trier says to Skarsgård. “We had a nude scene that for reasons of dramaturgy didn’t make it in. But he was walking around nude. He’s very open to the experience of showing human frailty and imperfection.”

“That was human imperfection!” says Skarsgård, making a comic hand gesture. “There’s a vanity in wanting to do perfect roles, and to do them perfectly. That excludes me from being vain in the process.”

The casting process involved Trier flying over to Skarsgård for lunch, pitching the film, and switching from Norwegian to English when he got nervous.

“Stellan speaks Swedish and I speak Norwegian,” says Trier. “They’re 80 per cent the same. But I said this stupid English term: ‘If you don’t do this, man, I’m up shit’s creek.’ Which sounds like a quote from an 80s movie.” He turns to the actor. “What did convince you? I don’t know.”

“I was convinced before we met,” says Skarsgård, laughing. “For fuck’s sake!”

“Oh!” says Trier. “He’s such a good actor.”

It’s [about] the devastation of throwing yourself to the ground, and feeling you can’t do it alone – which is a very human thing

In his early films, Trier explored insecure, young men who are emotionally inarticulate. Gustav, while older, shares traits with the bitter novelists of Reprise and incel-ish Conrad in Louder than Bombs. “In this case, Gustav grew up in a very specific context in history,” says Trier. “His family was traumatised by the Second World War. In a survival mechanism, a lot of families didn’t know how to talk it out.”

It’s why Sentimental Value can be full of elaborate sequences – examples include Nora narrating the house’s history, and the family’s faces merging into one entity through triple exposure of 35mm film – but the stand-out scene is Nora and Agnes reading an extract from Gustav’s script and collapsing in tears. How did Trier and Vogt write the monologue that would break the hearts of the characters, and, in turn, the audience?

“If you make a film about the greatest painter in the world, you have to have to the greatest paintings in the world to show the audience,” says Trier. “But that’s impossible. We really struggled with Gustav’s films and that monologue. But it started the other way around. The monologue was at the core of making this film. It came before the idea of how it would be used. We smuggled it in to represent that notion of fear.”

“That’s interesting,” says Skarsgård. “I didn’t know that.”

“It’s true,” says Trier. “We haven’t talked about it. We realised it fitted into these moments, because it explored key themes in Gustav, Nora, and perhaps his mother as well. It’s the devastation of throwing yourself to the ground, and feeling you can’t do it alone – which is a very human thing.”

Sentimental Value is out in UK cinemas on December 26