Sentimental Value (Norway, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Sweden, and Denmark, 2025)
Original title: Affeksjonsverdi
Director: Joachim Trier
Screenplay: Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt
Main cast: Renate Reinsve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Stellan Skarsgård, Elle Fanning, and Cory Michael Smith
Running time: 122 minutes
It’s a completely normal part of humanity that figures of power are gradually replaced by new ones. Since cinema doesn’t exist as an art form independently of its audience, it’s interesting that this is a moment in which it addresses the classic figure of the film director, especially considering the social and economic movements of recent years, which are finally trying to depose this white, older, heterosexual, male figure that typically comes to mind.
This ends up being the pretext for the Grand Prix-winning film at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. Stellan Skarsgård appears as this father figure who returns after a time away and seeks to reestablish his bonds of affection and connection with his daughters after a period of estrangement. But coincidentally, he is also a famous film director who hasn’t made films in a few years. Also taking advantage of the fact that one of his daughters is an actress, he begins a gentle procession of reintegration into this entire environment from which he had distanced himself.
After a successful international success with Verdens verste menneske (The Worst Person in the World, 2021), Joachim Trier already showed audiences that his interest lies not in overly easy solutions or uncomplex characters. But here, he also demonstrates an incredible balance between a narrative that explores sentimentality without seeking ‘easy’ sentimentality. The people in his fiction are as complete as real-life human beings, possessing not only a wide range of emotions, but also the capacity for contradictions in their own behavior. While this seems obvious when stated, it’s certainly not something easy to convey in a two-hour running time film, and the characters’ humanity alone would be more than enough to capture the public’s attention.
Although the distant Norway depicted in the film poses some challenges for a Latin American audience, where family relationships are typically somewhat closer and more heated, the great success of its plot lies in its approach to intergenerational conflict, which never limits itself to a simplistic perspective. This comprehensive execution is repeated in its technical aspects: the visual cinematography blends with an aesthetic that resorts to lyricism, without necessarily playing with the disruption of realism. Perhaps the greatest break with reality occurs due to editing that repeatedly uses the technique of cutting to black, shattering the expectation of the next scene and creating the feeling that the film has many endings before reaching its final scene. However, even this disruption speaks to the theme of incommunicability addressed in the script, demonstrating the director’s sagacity in crafting his film.
Clearly a reflection on itself and the peculiarities of modernity, the film manages to create scenes that linger with the viewer even after they leave the theater. And perhaps, in a time when everything fades so quickly, this is its greatest quality.
