There are four wondrous performances at the heart of Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier's ambitious rumination on forgiveness and the power of art. Two of them belong to Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, playing sisters Nora and Agnes. The third to Stellan Skargård, playing their father, Gustav. The fourth belongs to the location, a beautifully constructed house in Norway that serves as the backdrop and emotional anchor to the drama.

Our characters are bound by shared grief and unspoken trauma that has worked its way into the very foundations of their home. In a superlative opening act, which plays like a mixture between Ingmar Bergman and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, we see its history play through short vignettes of life throughout the ages. They all feel momentous, but in reality they're blinks of an eye in the grand scheme of things.

In the present, Nora and Agnes bury their mother. Their father, Gustav, who left the family years earlier, returns to pay his respects and figure out what to do with the house which has transferred to his name. At the same time, he presents Nora with a new screenplay for his next film: a part he wrote just for her.

Nora, already at odds with her father, reacts badly. His presence tears at old wounds, and the thought of making art from it feels like an insult. Agnes, who occasionally works as Gustav's researcher, is more open to diplomacy. Yet nothing comes of it. There is too much bad blood between them.

Nevertheless, Gustav presses on and casts the American actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) for the part. As they rehearse, Nora watches from afar, unable to form the words for this betrayal.

From here, Trier builds layers upon layers into his story of healing, some of which enrich the experience, others that feel like distractions. There are themes of Norway's history with the Nazi occupation, torture, self-harm, the enormity of time, cheating, crafting new personas to suit whatever phase of your life you're in, and more. It is a film as rich as a novel, and not all of it works in cinematic form.

But you wouldn't know it just by watching it, as Trier's wonderful script is tightly written and exquisitely composed. Each chapter plays like a vignette in time, fading in and out like stage lights between acts. By the end, as Trier reconstructs his metaphor in thrilling fashion, we realize just how far he's taken the meta-structure of his story.

I found the narrative a little self-satisfied by the end, especially as Trier concludes on a note that feels more of a pat on the back than the bittersweet harmony his story had already reached mere minutes earlier. Some of the side paths the film follows aren't strictly necessary for the plot, either. Though it feels wrong to admonish a film for taking its time, when the journey to the end is so pleasantly absorbing.

There's a remarkable scene midway through the film that won't leave me alone. The two sisters discuss their shared past, and how much of it remains between just them. The further they go, the more they realize each member of the family has seen more than will let on, and each is unable to communicate their longing through anything but their chosen profession.

Reinsve and Lilleaas play the realizations with gentle sweetness, like children seeing a new color for the first time. Amazed, scared, curious, and full of wonder at the possibilities of everything that will happen now they know it exists. If there is sadness about the past, it is so far in the distance the light can't reach it.

It's moments like this that make Sentimental Value so uplifting and inspiring. This is a film that feels shared and real because it understands why, as people, we're drawn to art. It is a form of empathy that allows us to learn, and rewards our vulnerability with a conversation that transcends time and space to encase the world entire.