Joachim Trier’s delightful family drama taps deeply into themes of family as it treads the line between art and life. Its real power is that it manages to work on so many levels, with new layers constantly presented to peel off, so we can delve deep into its exquisitely and painfully drawn family. 

The death of psychotherapist Sissel Borg brings film director Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård) back into the lives of his daughters Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) after extended absences, as he reclaims the family house and fails to cover his ulterior motive. Having left his family to focus on his career, Gustav’s filmmaking has fallen by the wayside, and he sees the chance to rekindle it with his daughter Nora, now a stage and screen actress taking the lead role in his comeback film. 

Nora flatly refuses, working instead through bouts of stage fright and her affair with a married colleague. While Gutav persists in reconnecting with his family in his difficult style, taking a step back for every one forward. Meanwhile, he enlists fast-rising American star Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) for the lead in his film. While her probing questions get close to uncovering Gustav’s mother as the inspiration for his script, the truth may be it’s much closer to the issues bubbling just below the surface of his estranged family. 

A tactile opening of the family house, weathering time, couldn’t be a better introduction to Sentimental Value, particularly where it loses sight of the two young sisters. It’s a refrain that returns in a clever film of broad sweeps, intelligent characterisation, and brilliantly built scenes.

Character introductions are masterfully realised, particularly of the key players.

Nora, experiencing stage fright before a curtain opening, legging it, a quick proposition for her boyfriend, and the whole crew swinging her round to point her in the right direction. Between that and the increasingly distant moments of her caught alone later in the film, Reinsve doesn’t let a beat drop.

Gustav is seen from a distance leaving his family, but his full introduction comes when he arrives at his late wife’s wake. It’s when Nora is showing her nephew Eric how she used to hear her parents arguing through a stove in her bedroom as a child, that she first hears he’s in the house—a confident, amusing and nostalgically chilling throwback. It’s similarly important how her sister—the mother, and nominally best-adjusted of the family—is introduced. In short, not with the same attention as her sister and father. How did she work out that way? As she tells her sister at one point, it’s because she had Nora.

We learn more about these fundamentally damaged characters, often with a bubbly jazz peak on the score. Throughout, the picture cuts to black, the ever-present suggestion of states of mind. But amid family meetings, clashes, antagonism, and repressed feelings, Trier also threads a strong dose of meta. Some of it is effortlessly folded into scenes (see Gustav playing in-camera tricks with Eric—the grandson he wants to be in his new film), building to a brilliant payoff in the final scene. Sentimental Value constantly blends life and art, as the substance of Gustav’s script becomes clear. The Seagull is frequently referenced; Chekhov’s shadow is constant.

There’s an inevitability to Sentimental Value’s conclusion, but the way it’s realised, with impressive sleight of hand and a hanging sense of fate and something beyond. Gustav sees himself in Nora, and maybe he’s genuine in that, despite the overriding flaws in his character. As Nora’s sister says about the script, “It’s mixed up in a lot of things,” but it’s his uncanny insight into his daughter and her past that is the crux. 

As the old house tells us in the beginning, sentimentality may pervade everything and be open to interpretation, but value isn’t.