‘Truthfully, you can never be a good parent’: Inside Sentimental Value, the year’s frankest, most emotional film

‘Sentimental Value’ director Joachim Trier with his stars Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Elle Fanning, Renate Reinsve and Stellan Skarsgård - (Ben Trivett/Shutterstock)

There is a scene in Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier’s Oscar-tipped family drama, in which an ageing director played by Stellan Skarsgård tells his estranged daughters, “You can’t write Ulysses driving to soccer practice.” Ostensibly, it’s an off-the-cuff comment about nobody in particular. Implicitly, it’s a defence of his own glaring absence from their lives growing up. Neither of the women are buying it.

For what it’s worth, the actor playing Gustav agrees with the statement. “It’s true. You cannot,” says Skarsgård, on a layover in London before flying back to Sweden for the holidays. The 74-year-old star of Mamma Mia!, Chernobyl and Dune is not ashamed to say he wasn’t the sort of dad to stick around at his kids’ football training. “It would be so boring,” he huffs with some melodrama. “I would die.”