A feckless father’s relationship with his exasperated adult daughters is the focus of this absorbing drama from Danish-Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier. Sentimental Value reunites Trier with the excellent Renate Reinsve (star of The Worst Person In The World), this time throwing Stellan Skarsgård and Elle Fanning into the mix.

Reinsve plays Nora Borg, a successful stage and TV actress who is estranged from her self-absorbed film director father Gustav (Skarsgård). After their mother dies, the mentally fragile Nora and her more sorted sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) are reunited with Gustav at their mother’s wake, sending Nora into a spin, especially after he suggests working together. When Nora refuses to collaborate on the painfully personal project he has written for her, a famous American actress (Fanning’s Rachel Kemp) takes on the role.

Beautifully performed throughout, Sentimental Value is a delicately directed story of the ties that bind and the relationships that, try as we might, we can’t run away from. Despite Fanning’s best efforts, the complicated dynamics of the Borg family are rather more interesting than Gustav’s interactions with her interloper American. As melancholy as much of this is, Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt (the writer/director behind 2021’s superb The Innocents) leaven things with humour and show refreshing faith that wounds can heal, given time. And, despite the ostensible focus on father-daughter dynamics, it’s the film’s tender portrayal of sisterhood that really tugs at the heart strings.

Sentimental Value is in cinemas from Friday 26 December.