Affeksjonsverdi / Sentimental Value

Joachim Trier: Affeksjonsverdi / Sentimental Value (NO/DE/DK/SE/FR/TK/GB 2025). The two sisters Nora Borg (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes Borg (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas).

2025. Country: Norway, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, France, Turkey, United Kingdom

Director: Joachim Trier

Shot on 35 mm

Starring: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Elle Fanning, Lena Endre

Languages: Norwegian, English

133 min

Distributor: Nordisk Film

Subtitles: Finnish, Swedish by Ilse Rönnberg / Charlotte Elo

    Love & Anarchy 38th Helsinki International Film Festival (HIFF)

Opening gala

Opened by Pauliina Ståhlberg - Pekka Lanerva - Outi Rehn - with Annu Suvanto, Inari Ylinen and Diego Ginartes Rodríguez

Thu 18.9.2025 at 16.00–18.13, Bio Rex Lasipalatsi

Saija Holm (HIFF 2025): "The spirit of Ingmar Bergman is strongly present in one of this year’s most magnificent movie gems, a ruggedly beautiful and unsentimental story of love, mercy, art and sisterhood."

"Stellan Skarsgård is an egotistical film director whose selfish choices have left his now grown-up daughters lacerated. Nora (Renate Reinsve) is a hot-headed straight talker, an actress suffering from crippling stage fright, who has a complex relationship with her father, her work in the theatre — and herself. The seemingly lucid sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) lives a nuclear family life and is sentimental only in her research work."

"At the heart of the story is the sisters’ National Romantic childhood home, which hides doors, memories and secrets within. One day, the director father brings in actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), the star of his next film…"

"Four years ago, Joachim Trier, Renate Reinsve and Trier’s co-writer Eskil Vogt caused a sensation with their film The Worst Person in the World. Now they are spoiling us even more with their new film, which enchanted in Cannes."

"The stunningly intense film knocks the wind out of the audience. Renate Reinsve’s eyes burn a hole in the screen through which we see ghosts whacking and caressing the living." Saija Holm (translated by Moritz Müller)

"Vuoden upeimpiin lukeutuva elokuvahelmi on sentimentaalisuuden välttävä ja rujon kaunis kertomus rakkaudesta, armosta, taiteesta ja sisaruudesta."

"Ingmar Bergmanin henki on vahvasti läsnä vuoden upeimpiin lukeutuvassa elokuvahelmessä, joka on sentimentaalisuuden välttävä, rujon kaunis kertomus rakkaudesta, armosta, taiteesta ja sisaruudesta."

"Stellan Skarsgård on egoistinen elokuvaohjaaja, jonka itsekkäät valinnat ovat jättäneet nyt jo aikuiset tyttäret ruhjeille. Nora (Renate Reinsve) on äkkiväärä suorasuu, lamaannuttavasta ramppikuumeesta kärsivä näyttelijä, jolla on kompleksinen suhde isäänsä, työhönsä teatterissa – ja itseensä. Näennäisen selväjärkinen Agnes-sisko (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) elää ydinperhearkea ja tunteilee ainoastaan tutkimustyönsä äärellä. Keskeisessä roolissa on sisarusten kansallisromanttinen lapsuudenkoti, joka kätkee sisälleen ovia, muistoja ja salaisuuksia. Eräänä päivänä ohjaajaisä tuo taloon näyttelijä Rachel Kempin (Elle Fanning), seuraavan elokuvansa tähden…"

"Neljä vuotta sitten Joachim Trier, Renate Reinsve ja Trierin työparina toimiva käsikirjoittaja Eskil Vogt aiheuttivat sensaation elokuvallaan The Worst Person in the World. Nyt he hemmottelevat meitä lisää Cannesissa lumonneella, virtuoosimaisella uutuudellaan."

"Pökerryttävän intensiivinen elokuva iskee ilmat pihalle. Renate Reinsven silmät polttavat valkokankaaseen reiän, josta näemme haamujen mätkivän ja hellivän eläviä." Saija Holm

AA: Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value starts as the story of the Borg family house in Oslo: a National Romantic building in Dragestil ("dragon style"). It is a house of secrets, nightmares and family tragedies. And there is a fracture in the foundation.

A prestigious premiere is interrupted at the Oslo Nationaltheatret. The prima donna Nora Borg (Renate Reinsve), playing Nora in A Doll's House, has stage fright. The music cue is Hector Berlioz's of the Gregorian chant "Dies irae" ("The Day of Wrath"), about the Last Judgment, familiar in the cinema from Fritz Lang (Metropolis) to Carl Th. Dreyer (The Day of Wrath), also popular in heavy metal.

In her previous film Armand, the extraordinary (and even otherworldly) Reinsve played the misunderstood schoolboy's mother like a drama queen of her own life. In Sentimental Value, she plays a drama queen by profession who is totally lost in her own life.

Sissel Borg, the mother of the sisters Nora and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, equally outstanding) has died. When their father Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård) left the family, he gave the house to Sissel but the documentation of ownership was never completed, which is why the house now again belongs to him.

Enter Gustav Borg. There is a striking parallel to Noah Baumbach's Jay Kelly (US 2025) in which George Clooney plays a self-centered film star who has passed his best before date and now visits a retrospective of his movies. He has two daughters who ignore him because he was never there when they grew up. Jay has not lost his charm, but he faces an existential identity crisis. 

There the parallels end. Jay Kelly is a road movie with flashbacks like Wild Strawberries. Sentimental Value is based on jumbled timelines, and ultimately it is about coming to terms with transgenerational tragedy.

I have four favourite sequences in Sentimental Value.

The meeting of Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) and Nora Borg (Renate Reinsve). Rachel has tried her best to become immersed in the role in Gustav's film, but increasingly she senses that it is meant for Nora and she is just a replacement. She does not understand the character who commits suicide like Gustav's mother Karin Borg (Vilde Søyland) had done, in a film meant to be shot on location at the family house.

The nocturnal meeting of Rachel with Gustav. Rachel is a Hollywood star who is genuinely committed to a personal project with high artistic value, and she has invested deeply in the Hemlängtan (Homesickness) screenplay. Her bankability has made the production possible on a high level, but Gustav is also committed to Rachel as an artist who can bring the film to life on her own terms. These two encounters bring out the best of the professionals. They do not simplify complex terms of engagement and highlight great human qualities in all involved.

My third favourite sequence is the one where first Agnes, then Nora have finally read the screenplay, which Gustav has already promoted as the best thing he has ever done. As he would say. But Agnes is really impressed and tells Nora. "It is about you. It has been written for you". 

One more favourite sequence is the finale. Nora opens the door with the rope and the chair. The chair falls. The camera starts a long backward tracking shot to reveal the soundstage and the entire production crew in a general view.

As the plot unfolds we learn clues to the fabula. During the German occupation of Norway (1940-1945), Karin Borg, Gustav's mother, was a Resistance fighter active in distributing anti-Nazi propaganda until she was imprisoned for two years. Nora and Agnes, her granddaughters, get access to the archives with her files and find out about the usual torture methods with graphic illustrations.

We are free to imagine for ourselves why many who survived Nazi terror later committed suicide. Gustav grew up motherless, and himself became a terrible father for his daughters. Now Nora seems to walk the path of Karin, and in Hemlängtan she incarnates a fate similar to Karin.

The only sample we get of a film by Gustav Borg is the clip at the retrospective of two little children escaping Nazis during the occupation. The daughter survives by catching a moving train. The son is caught. The daughter was played by Agnes as a child. Gustav was always impressed by her performance, but Agnes rejected him because that was the only time in her life when she was the center of his world.

The screening had Finnish and Swedish subtitles, but the copy did not carry a Finnish title. The straight translation TUNNEARVO would be accurate in every way and better than the original since shorter.