{"id":81495,"date":"2026-08-04T09:09:43","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T01:09:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=81495"},"modified":"2026-08-04T09:09:43","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T01:09:43","slug":"sentimental-value-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=81495","title":{"rendered":"Sentimental Value (2025)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World<\/a><\/em> stays in my mind for being one of the most subversive films I’ve watched and I always congratulate myself for figuring what it wants to express. Sentimental Value<\/em> features the same lead actress Renate Reinsve but with multiple key characters in play, it’s harder to narrow down what it’s about. In the event, the theme of depression isn’t as unique but its intricate exploration of parent-child dynamics and perfect execution makes it fantastic anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Nora Borg is a talented stage actress but suffers from such debilitating stage fright that she tries to run away before a performance. When her mother dies, her father Gustav Borg returns to Norway after a long absence since the parents’ divorce. Estranged from Nora and her sister Agnes, he clumsily attempts a reconciliation but is rebuffed. He approaches Nora to act in his new film but she refuses to even read the script. While attending a retrospective of his work at a film festival, Gustav befriends celebrity American actress Rachel Kemp. Her involvement in his film helps him secure funding but he has to adapt the script to English. The film is ostensibly about Gustav’s mother Karin who in the resistance during the Nazi occupation and was captured and tortured for it. She subsequently committed suicide when Gustav was a young boy. Agnes, who is married and has a son, is cordial with Rachel but the avoidant Nora stays away. Rachel begins to doubt her suitability for the role when she has difficulty understanding the mindset of the character she is meant to play and realizes that Gustav sees her as a replacement for Nora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trier uses an intriguing framing device here, centering the narrative around the house which has been in the family for generations. Nora imagines the house as if it were a person witnessing the lives of the members of the Borg family. This threw me off for a bit as there is a lot going on here with the lives of Gustav, Nora and Karin during the Second World War. In the end, the house is just a somewhat crude metaphor for generational trauma and the larger point is that depression runs in the family. The thing is Trier keeps you guessing for a good long while, forcing the audience to put all the clues together. Gustav’s wife was a therapist and he drinks too much. Nora considers herself broken. It’s neat how he gets you to come to the conclusion yourself so when you see Gustav flipping off the sky, you understand that he’s fighting against the same suicidal impulse that took his mother every day of his life. It’s realistic that it is depression that keeps Gustav from opening himself up to his daughters. At the same time, it’s somewhat underwhelming that you work through the grand mystery, including the shocking case of Karin being tortured by the Nazis, and this is the answer you get at the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel bad for the character of Rachel Kemp as well. She seems as out of place here as Elle Fanning who plays the character as everyone else awkwardly switches to English to speak to her. When she gives up the role, she apologizes and Gustav tells her not to think of it as a failure. It seems to me that it’s Gustav who owes her an apology as she was always meant as a stand-in for Nora as she eventually realizes. It’s not hard to see that Gustav takes advantage of her being a famous actress to get funding for his film even though she’s not quite right for the role. Along with Karin’s shocking ordeal that is unearthed through Agnes’ research, these feel like red herrings that make the audience wonder if there’s more to the film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I enjoyed working out what Gustav is trying to communicate to his daughters in the writing of his script and the amazing performances of all involved. It’s wonderful how subtle the storytelling is and it’s certainly a more effective method of conveying the intensity of depression rather than telling the audience straight out. But I wasn’t as wowed as I was by The Worst Person in the World<\/em> as this is a more familiar subject matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World stays in my mind for being one of the most subversive films I’ve watched and I always congratulate myself for figuring what it wants to express. Sentimental Value features the same lead actress Renate Reinsve but with multiple key characters in play, it’s harder to narrow down … Continue reading Sentimental Value (2025)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81495"}],"version-history":[{"count":51,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81628,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81495\/revisions\/81628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}